is isn't the
same old dinner service father bought when we were youngsters. It's
wonderful that you've kept it; but I don't miss a thing. You've even
hung on to the old double-barreled pickle thing and the revolving
castor."

She tasted her soup with satisfaction.

"I can see that you are not averse to the fleshpots. I dare say your
bachelor establishment is a model. Don't the neighbors try to break in
and steal the help? As I remember Fanny she always took the easiest way
round. Which is Kate's house, the one beyond the next, or the third?"

"The second; she came next. There's nothing in between your old house
and Kate's place."

Amzi met his sister's eyes with a scrutiny that expressed mild surprise
that she should thus make necessary a reference to her former domicile,
and with somewhat less interest than she had taken in the ancestral
china. To Amzi her return was a fact of importance, and since receiving
her telegram from New York announcing her visit to Montgomery he had
been in the air as to its meaning. Jack Holton's appearance only a few
weeks earlier still agitated the gossips. He assumed that Lois knew
nothing of this, as, indeed, she did not; but there was nothing in his
knowledge of his sister to encourage the belief that she would have
cared if she had known. His old love for her warmed his heart as he
watched her across the table. In the one interview he had had with her
after her flight,--an hour's talk in Chicago,--he had not so fully
realized as now, in this domestic setting, how gracefully she bore her
years and her griefs! It was this that puzzled him. Sorrow was not
written in her still youthful face, nor was it published in her fine
brown eyes. They were singularly lovely eyes--retaining something of
their girlish roguishness. His masculine eye saw no hint of gray in her
brown hair. She was astonishingly young, not only in appearance but in
manner, and her vivacity--her quick smile, her agreeable murmurous
laughter--deepened his sense of her charm. She had not only been his
favorite sister in old times; but through all these years he had carried
her in his heart. And though his restraint yielded before her good humor
he was appalled by the situations--no end of them!--created by her
return.

Not a soul knew of her coming. As he reflected that his sisters were
even then dining tranquilly in their several domiciles, quite oblivious
of the erring Lois's proximity, he inwardly chuckled. They had