following the
knife, hot breads, wild grape jelly, hominy and celery.

The fattest Old Gentleman carved the ducks. The people who had come on
the train were evidently his friends. Indeed, he called the little lady
with the shining eyes "Cousin Nancy."

"So you've brought your boy back?" he said, smiling down at her.

"Oh, yes, yes. Cousin Brin, I feel as if I had reached the promised
land."

"You'll find things changed. Nothing as it was in your father's time.
Foreigners to the right of you, foreigners to the left. Italians,
Greeks--barbarians--cutting the old place into little farms--blotting out
the old landmarks."

"I don't care; the house still stands, and Richard will hang out my
father's sign, and when people want a doctor, they will come again to
Crossroads."

"People in these days go to town for their doctors."

Richard's head went up. "I'll make them come to me, sir. And you mustn't
think that mother brought me back. I came because I wanted to come. I
hate New York."

The listening Old Gentlemen, whose allegiance was given to a staid and
stately town on the Patapsco, quite glowed at that, but Evelyn flamed:

"You might have made a million in New York, Richard."

"I don't want a million."

"Oh," she appealed to Brinsley Tyson, "what can you do with a man like
that--without red blood--without ambition?"

And now it was Richard who flamed. "I am ambitious enough, Eve, but it
isn't to make money."

"He has some idea," the girl proclaimed recklessly to the whole table,
"of living as his ancestors lived; as if one _could_. He believes that
people should go back to plain manners and to strict morals. His mission
is to keep this mad world sane."

A ripple of laughter greeted her scorn. Her own laughter met it. The slim
young man at the other end of the table swung his eye-glasses from their
black ribbon negligently, but his eyes missed nothing.

"It is my only grievance against you, Mrs. Nancy," Eve told the little
shining lady. "I love you for everything else, but not for this."

"I am sorry, my dear. But Richard and I think alike. So we are going to
settle at Crossroads--and live happy ever after."

Anne Warfield, outwardly calm, felt the blood racing in her veins. The
old house at Crossroads was just across the way from her little school.
She had walked in the garden every day, and now and then she had taken
the children there. They had watched the squirrels getting ready for the
winter, and h