"I like Gypsy ever so much better than I did once," Joy wrote to her father.

One thing they had learned that winter.

Every generous deed, every thoughtful word, narrowed the distance between them; each one wiped out the ugly memory of some past impatience, some past unkindness.

And now something was about to happen that should bring them nearer to each other than anything had done yet.
That June night on which they sat at the tea-table discussing the excursion up Rattlesnake was the beginning of it.

When Winnie was sufficiently mopped up to admit of his locomotion about the house with any safety to the carpets, he was dispatched to the library on the errand to his father.