“America’s best.”

Considering the very short time little Nora had been at the Nest, it appeared much, in the way of acquaintance, had been accomplished.

“If you will just run off, Jerry-boy, and manage to find something to keep you busy for a half hour or so,” begged his wife finally, “perhaps Nora and I will be able to settle down to the comforts of home.”

“Am I not included?” he asked teasingly.

“Sometimes, but just now we need space,” replied she, who was affectionately styled Teddy.

“That being the case——. Come along Cap,” and the next moment a very happy, boyish man and a wildly happy dog went scampering off through the “flap-jack” path in the clearance. The path was made of selected flat stones scattered at stepping intervals, and it was Jerry who insisted they reminded him of Vita’s best flap-jacks.

The coming of Nora to the lodge in the wilderness was the result of what seemed a necessity. The child was the daughter of Theodora Crane’s best friend Naomie Blair, an artist so highly temperamental that, after a series of nerve episodes, she finally seemed forced to go to Western mountains and leave little Nora at a select school. The school was select to the point of isolation, and the teachers had advised Theodora, who was in charge of Nora, that the child was so nervous, high strung and fanciful, that the doctors had ordered a complete change of surroundings.

These characteristics were already showing in Nora’s conduct; but with that understanding of childhood always a part of pure affection for it, Theodora was pleased, rather than worried, over the prospects ahead.

Nora herself seemed bewildered and fascinated. Her love of “dream things” was plainly a part of her nature, at the same time she was quickly learning that only happy realities can make happy dreams.

In the small satchel that Nora clung to was found no suitable change of anything like practical clothing, in fact her dress was so fussy, be-ribboned and be-frilled, that Teddy hesitated about offering any of it to the briars and brambles of the timberland.

“I pick out all my own dresses, you know,” the little girl explained. “Nannie wasn’t able to do any shopping so she had the catalogues sent to me by mail.”

“Nannie?”

“That’s mother, of course. But she is so little and delicate I could never think of calling her mother,” declared Nora. “She likes Nannie better.”

“You have quite a talent for names or re-names,” joked Teddy. “I am wondering how I should have liked the ‘Lizzie’ you chose for me.”

“Not Lizzie! Elizabeth,” in a shocked voice.

“Same lady, I believe. But let’s hold on to Ted until we get acquainted or things may go on end,” advised good-natured Mrs. Manners. “Besides, there’s our auto, that’s ‘Lizzie’ to Jerry.”

Nora did not ask why. She was in the yellow room, changing, and the blue roses in the filmy little dress she selected were not bluer than her own wondering eyes.

“I tell you what would be just the thing for you, dear,” said Teddy suddenly. “You must join the Girl Scouts!”

“Girl Scouts!”

“Yes, you know about them, don’t you?”

“I’ve read about them, but I really never could, Aunt Teddy. I couldn’t be one of those wild, uncultured girls.”

A delicious laugh escaped Teddy.

“Wild and uncultured!” she repeated. Then, seeing the pitifully blank look on Nora’s face she dropped the subject. “Here’s your closet,” she explained next, opening the door of a built-in wardrobe, “and you better slip these little pads on the ends of hangers when you put pretty things on them. You see, we have very few fancy things out here, and these hangers are cut from our birch trees. I had a visitor last year who was so afraid of snakes she spent all her time around the lodge, so she made these pine pads with fancy stocking ends. I have never needed to use them.”

The pads were little cushions of pine needles sewed in silk stocking ends, with a long open seam along the side. These slipped onto the hangers and were tied with tapes at the hook. Nora quickly adjusted one for her dotted swiss dress and another for her pink rose silk. These, strange to tell, she had carried in her hand bag.

“And here is your dresser,” Teddy further introduced. “See what lovely deep drawers.”

“Aren’t they? I’d love to put lavender and rosemary in the corners. Do you—like those perfumes?”

“Well, yes, as perfumes. But I’m so used to the odor of freshly cut trees I’m afraid my finer taste is disappearing,” said the other quietly.

Into the drawer Nora was placing such an outlay of finery as any young bride might have boasted of. Selecting from catalogues was only too evident in the lacy garments, with little ribbons, and tiny rose buds; pretty in themselves but absurd on the undergarments of a growing child. Then, there was an ivory set, mirror, comb, brush, etc. As the surprised Teddy glimpsed the display over a khaki covered shoulder she had difficulty in choking back a laugh.

“Naomie would be as silly as that,” she pondered, silently, reflecting that the same sort of whims in dress and finery had been a real part of Naomie Blair’s young girlhood.

Nora was placing her pretty things on the big dresser, with skilled little fingers, and that the fancy, private, exclusive school had helped to make silly traits even more pronounced in little Nora, was too evident.

Wisely, however, Mrs. Ted said not a word in opposition. Things must move slowly, she realized, if the quaint little dreamer was not to be too rudely shocked out of her fancies.

It was all very exciting even to the placid, well balanced young woman. To have the daughter of her girlhood friend come into her very arms, like a little bird battered in the storm of life’s uncertainties, with tired wings falling against the bright window pane of love; then to see the dreams unfolded with the Jims, Elizabeths, ghosts and attic fancies, ready to reel off like an actual moving-picture—it was all very surprising, not to say astonishing, for the sensible, modern Mantons.

But could this same bright-eyed lady have looked into the summer ahead, and forseen the new fields of fancies that Nora was about to explore, she might have been still more amazed. Playing mother to a butterfly is not often a very satisfactory experience, but there was Nora, and if ever a child needed a mother this little “whimsy” did.

“To think of calling her mother Nannie,” reflected Mrs. Manton, “and if only I could have called such a child ‘daughter.’”

Jerry was back from his enforced trip to the lumberland, and his whistle trickled in the window on a flood of sunshine.

“Oh, let’s go down,” exclaimed Nora, brushing things hastily into the dresser drawer and neglecting to tie her sash in an even bow. “I’m so anxious to see your outdoors, I could easily believe there are fairies in these thick, tangly woods.”

“Our birds and little animal friends are just as interesting as fairies,” remarked Mrs. Ted, “but you must know them and they must know you.”

“How ever could one get acquainted with birds?” asked Nora, stopping a moment on her way out to answer Jerry’s whistle.

“We don’t know how, but we know we do,” replied Mrs. Ted, giving the flying window curtain a jerk to let the sun stream in. “Some day I must tell you about the poor little blue-jay we took in and nursed. He got so fond of us I could hardly get him to fly away.”

“I had a canary once, Nannie sent it for Christmas, but I had to let him go,” said Nora. “He was just breaking his heart in that tiny, little cage. I never wanted a bird again.”

“They are pathetic when caged,” agreed Mrs. Manton, “but when out in their own woods they seem to be the very happiest little creatures of all creation. Run along,” she said, as Nora