pillows of the couch.

There was silence for a while, and when Oscar looked up he saw a tear
trickling down his uncle's cheek, as he stood with his back to the fire.

"Uncle Jonathan, is that tear for me?" he asked, in wistful surprise.

"Yes, my boy; because I know what you are feeling. My life has been a
silent one--too silent perhaps--but there are things that I, too, have
missed in that same life. I doubt if there are many lives without the
miss and the loss."

Something prompted the boy to stretch out his hand toward his uncle, and
he took it with such a warm grasp.

"Uncle, I'll be a farmer; I've intended to tell you so for
days--only----"

"Well, never mind, we understand each other now; and let me say this
much, Oscar: the humdrum farm-life, as I've heard you call it behind my
back"--Dr. Willett smiled somewhat sadly--"won't be so humdrum as you
think, if you make of it a life work--a something to be handled nobly,
and made the most of. A tinker's life could be hardly humdrum with that
end in view."

"If I were a tinker, no tinker beside
Should mend an old kettle like me;
Let who will be second, whatever betide,
The first I'm determined to be,"

came jingling through the boy's brain, and made him smile.

"Yes, uncle, I see; thank you for speaking out." He raised his uncle's
hand to his lips and kissed it, as a girl might have done; the distance
between him and his uncle was bridged over at last for ever.

"You see, I never thought Uncle Jonathan cared for me before," he said
to Inna afterward.

And now Inna seemed to walk on air; going here and there about the farm
with Oscar, who was too weak for study still, but trying with all his
might to take an interest in what was going on out of doors.

"A good long voyage would cure him of his sea-fever, and quite set him
up for hard work," remarked Mr. Barlow to the doctor; and both wondered
if it could be managed.

* * * * *

Well, in the midst of all this, home came Mr. and Mrs. Weston one fine
May day, like swallows, to make Inna's summer complete. They arrived
suddenly, as travellers often do, the letter that was sent to announce
them making its appearance the morning after they were at the farm--for
such things do happen now and then.

Now the days followed on indeed like a happy dream to Inna, she and her
mother comparing notes together, and joining the threads of their
divided lives again. M