The next morning I awoke to a new world—­or rather I turned straight about and went back into my own proper scheme of existence.  At the crack of dawn I wakened and set my muscles for the spring from my pillows, then I stretched my arms, yawned, snuggled my cheek into those same pillows, and deliberately went to sleep, covering up my head with the old embroidered counter-pane to shut out from my ears a clarion crow from beyond my windows.  When I next became conscious old Rufus’ woolly head was peering anxiously into my room door, and I judged from the length of the shadows that the sun cast from the windows that it must be after ten o’clock.

“Am you sick?” he inquired with belligerent solicitude.

“No, Rufus, and I’m going back to sleep.  Call me in time to have dinner with father and Uncle Cradd,” I answered as I again burrowed into the pillows.

“I give that there rooster and family a bucket of feed,” said Rufus begrudgingly, and he stood as if waiting to be praised for thus burying the hatchet that he had been mentally brandishing over the neck of the enemy.

I made no response, but stretched my tired limbs out between the silky old sheets and again lost consciousness.

The next time I became intelligent it was when Polly’s soft arm was slid under my neck and her red lips applied to my cheek.

“Miss Ann, are you ill?” she questioned frantically.  “Mr. Matthew and I have been here for hours and have fed and attended to everything.  He made me come up because he was afraid you might be dead.”

“I am, Polly, and now watch me come back to life,” I said as I sat up and blinked at the sun coming in through the western window, thus proclaiming the time as full afternoon.

“We found Mr. G. Bird and all of the other—­” Polly was beginning to say when I cut her short.

“Polly, dear, please go tell Matthew to ride down to the bank and telephone Bess that I’m coming in to stay a week with her and to invite Belle and Owen and the rest to dinner.  By the time he gets back I’ll be ready to go.”  As I spoke I threw the sheet from me and started to arise, take up my life, and walk.

“But who’ll attend to the chickens and—­” Polly fairly gasped.

“I don’t know and I don’t care, and if you want to go in to dinner with us, Polly, you had better hurry on, for you’ll have to beg your mother hard,” I said, and at the suggestion Polly fairly flew.

I don’t exactly know what Polly told Matthew about me, but his face was a study as I descended elegantly clad and ready to go to town with him.

“Good, dear!” he said as I raised my lips to his and gave him a second edition of that ring-around-rosy kiss.  “I knew you would wear yourself out.  I have telephoned Owen to motor out that young Belgian that Baldwin got down to run my farm, and he’ll take charge of everything while you rest.”

“I don’t care whether he comes or not,” I said as I walked towards the library door to say good-by to my parent twins, who hardly noticed me at all on account of a knotty disagreement in some old Greek text they were digging over.