III Sister and Brother

Then Madeline returned to the little parlor with the brother whom
she had hardly recognized.

"Majesty!" he exclaimed. "To think of your being here!"

The warmth stole back along her veins. She remembered how that
pet name had sounded from the lips of this brother who had given
it to her.

"Alfred!"

Then his words of gladness at sight of her, his chagrin at not
being at the train to welcome her, were not so memorable of him
as the way he clasped her, for he had held her that way the day
he left home, and she had not forgotten. But now he was so much
taller and bigger, so dusty and strange and different and
forceful, that she could scarcely think him the same man. She
even had a humorous thought that here was another cowboy bullying
her, and this time it was her brother.

"Dear old girl," he said, more calmly, as he let her go, "you
haven't changed at all, except to grow lovelier. Only you're a
woman now, and you've fulfilled the name I gave you. God! how
sight of you brings back home! It seems a hundred years since I
left. I missed you more than all the rest."

Madeline seemed to feel with his every word that she was
remembering him. She was so amazed at the change in him that she