saluting her as mother, kissing him quietly, properly, as the Camerons
always kissed. She was very glad to have Wilford home again, for he was
her favorite child, and brushing the raindrops from his coat she led him
to the fire, offering him her own easy-chair and starting herself in
quest of another. But Wilford held her back, and making her sit down, he
drew an ottoman beside her and then asked her first how she had been and
then how Jamie was, then where his sisters were, and if his father had
come home--for there was a father, the elder Cameron, a quiet,
unassuming man, who stayed all day in Wall Street, seldom coming home in
time to carve at his own dinner table, and when he was at home, asking
for nothing except to be left by his fashionable wife and daughters to
himself, free to smoke and doze over his evening paper in the seclusion
of his own reading-room.

As Wilford's question concerning his sire had been the last one asked,
so it was the last one answered, his mother parting his dark hair with
her jeweled hand, and telling him first that with the exception of a
cold taken at the park on Saturday afternoon when she drove out to try
the new carriage, she was in usual health; second, that Jamie was very
well, but impatient for his uncle's return; third, that Juno was
spending a few days in Orange, and that Bell had gone to pass the night
with her particular friend, Mrs. Meredith, the bluest, most bookish
woman in New York.

"Your father," the lady added, "has not yet returned, but as the dinner
is ready I think we will not wait."

She touched a silver bell beside her, and ordering dinner to be sent up
at once, went on to ask her son concerning his journey, and the people
he had met. But Wilford, though intending to tell her all, for he kept