Mother met me at the door with more emotion than I had ever before
detected upon her thin face. Then I saw that the dear people had been at
work within the house as well. Cosey corners and modern wall paper and
fittings such as I had seen at the professors' houses and had described at
home to auditors apparently slightly interested, had been remembered and
treasured up and here attempted, to make my homecoming a festivity. The
house had been transformed, and if not always in the best of taste, love
shone through the blunders.

"Oh, Father," I cried, "now I am surprised! How much wheat it must have
cost!"

"Well, I guess we can stand it," he said, grimly pleased and proud and
anxious all at once. "We wanted to make it kind o' pleasant for ye, Sis;
an'--an' homelike."

There was something so soft and tremulous in his voice that it struck me
with a great pang of contrition that I had left him for so many years,
that already I was eager to go away again--to the great city where John
was soon to be.

I turned quickly away and went from room to room admiring the changes, but
after supper, when we were all gathered about the sitting room table,
Father returned to the subject most upon his mind. He had seen me with
John during Commencement week, and must have understood matters.

"Ready t' stay hum now, I s'pose, ain't ye?" he asked with a note in his
voice of cheery assurance that perhaps he did not feel, tilting back and
forth in his old-fashioned rocking chair, as I had so often seen him do,