ent me all that money, with that
letter 'as justice to Tom Welcome's widow?' Patience and Harry are so
happy now it makes me feel like wanting to forget the past. If only I
could know where my baby girl is. But I just must go on trusting. Somehow
I feel hopeful. Patience and Harry want me to be brave. Harry's
father--he must find it hard to be brave too. He must be lonesome,
estranged from his son, no one to comfort him. Perhaps he sent me that
money really as a sign to Harry that he wants to be friends again. I
won't say anything to Harry about it just yet, but maybe some of these
days...." The direct train of her thought was interrupted by the sound of
a bird singing on the bough of a tree close by the opened window.

She stepped out into the side porch and looked about her with a glance of
pleasure in the neatness and charm of the little place. House and fence
had been painted and mended, put in tidy order. A new gate and a cement
sidewalk in front running down to the corner of the street spoke for the
industry of Harvey Spencer who had worked like a son for her in his spare
hours.

The song of the bird in the elm bough had dropped to a happy twittering.
The fragrance of late garden blossoms filled the air. At the end of the
deep yard, beyond the vegetable garden and close to the back gate Harvey
had built a pretty summer house and over it a madeira vine hung its
abundant quick growing wreaths of green.

Mrs. Welcome in her light summer dress, her gray hair moved a trifle by
the soft warm breeze, walked slowly down the garden path and sat down for
a few moments of rest in this quiet spot. A sudden sadness came upon her
face as almost always these months since her home coming when she rested
from her working.

But she rose resolutely and banished the thought.

"Today is my oldest daughter's day. I must think of nobody but Patience
and make her coming home with her husband as glad as can be."

She spoke aloud, to make her resolution stronger and walked back towards
the house, gathering nasturtiums and asparagus as she went, to decorate
the fresh and pretty parlor, with its new white muslin curtains and wall
paper and the piano which Harry Boland had sent.

"It's perfectly lovely, mother," Patience was saying to her in this room
within the hour, Patience whom everybody in Millville loved, standing
radiant and happy beside her equally radiant bridegroom. "How did you
ever get those flowers to trail over that pictu