The leaves were still on the trees, and Ty-gwyn looking _almost_ as pretty as in full summer when the travellers arrived to find Kathleen still with her aunt, though poor little Philippa had had to go back to school at the end of the holidays.
But she came to see her friends again before long, and this time for more than a visit, for it had been arranged that during the three years of her parents" absence she was to live with the Powyses altogether, and share Kathie"s lessons.
So Miss Clotilda"s pleasant castles in the air came to be realized. I doubt if any happier family was to be found _anywhere_ than the good people, big and little, in the old white house near the sea, that Christmas when Neville came home for his holidays, to find them all there together.
And in one corner of the library, under a gla.s.s shade and on a little stand all to itself, is a queer old-fashioned-looking sort of box, covered in faded silk, and seemingly rather out of place among the pretty things with which the room is adorned. But no one thinks it out of place when its history is told, and it is known to be the old pincushion, the _very_ identical old pincushion, which for so many years had held the secret of the missing will!
[Ill.u.s.tration]