Free Girl to Come Home To by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

orders from Washington and the boys might have to go away again. Although they had told her that they understood their next assignment would likely be in the United States, but her mother heart kept turning wistfully to her Lord, just to help her trust. For all her petitions had to go through the permission of her Lord.
    So it was a very happy family at that breakfast table the third morning of their stay at home, and they were beginning to plan what they would do and where they would go and who of the old friends they must be sure to see first. Though at any mention of leaving home even for a few hours they all groaned.
    “Mom, if I were going to live a thousand years, I’d like to make sure I could come home here every night to sleep. Just you try to sleep once in a sack overnight or on a ship that is being bombed and you’d know what I mean. I have great sympathy for the man who wrote ‘Home! Sweet Home!’, ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.’ And this is anything but a humble home.”
    “Dear boy!” said Mrs. Graeme tenderly with sudden tears of joy in her eyes.
    “Please make that plural, Mom,” urged Rodney. “I could echo every word of that sentiment.”
    “Dear
boys
!” said the mother, suddenly smiling brightly through more tears.
    And it was just then that Kathleen sprang from her chair and stepped over to the window, then backed away. “Good night, Mother, don’t cry! Look who’s coming in the gate. Mop up your eyes and pretend you’re laughing.”
    “What! Who?” said Rodney, springing to his feet and stretching his tall height to look out the window from the vantage of his place at the table.
    “It isn’t that girl again, is it?” he blurted.
    “No, no, Rod,” laughed his sister, “not quite so bad as that. It’s only Cousin Louella!”
    “Good night, it is indeed,” said Jeremy. “And I was going to eat another plateful of pancakes, but this has to do me till tomorrow morning. I can’t stand another session with Cousin Lou.” He grabbed the last two cakes on the plate, emptied a couple spoonfuls of sugar on one, folded them neatly together, and scuttled up the back stairs, calling back in a sepulchral whisper, “Mom, if anybody asks for me, tell ’em I didn’t say where I was going, just errands.”
    Rodney stopped long enough to get the last swallow of coffee before he departed, and he could just hear Cousin Louella’s key in the front latch as he closed the back door, pulling on an old sweater and making his way to the garage where Kathie kept the old car.
    “It’s all right, Rod,” said his sister, hurrying after him. “I put the chain on the front door last night, and the latchkey won’t do any good. She’ll have to ring and wait till somebody comes to open the door.”
    Rodney grinned. “Thanks awfully, Kath. You’re a good angel,” he said. “You might hang a handkerchief out your window when she leaves. I won’t come back till she’s gone.” With another grin and a wave of his hand he vanished into the garage.
    Kathleen hurried back into the house to save her mother from going to the door. “You aren’t going to ask her to stay to lunch, are you, Mother? Because the boys won’t come back if you do. I promised to hang out a flag for Rod when she’s gone.”
    “No,” the mother said, smiling “not today. I have to go down to the village on an errand. I can perhaps ask her to go along.”
    “But Rod’s got the car.”
    “Oh, well, that’s all right. I’ll go later. You leave her to me. If I give her some work to do she won’t stay long. I’ll let her put those hems in my new aprons. You bring them down to me and I’ll sit right here and sew them on. You can be dusting the hall and library and be near enough to hear any signals I send out. She will maybe like to take a walk with you.”
    “Not she,” Kathleen said with a grin. “She always says she has sprained her foot when I ask her to take a walk. But you might try her