to come in on you all at
Christmas! You are a bit stouter--you two--but Fanny hasn't changed a
bit. Alec"--she swung round toward the bewildered men--"I don't believe
you know me, but I should have recognized you anywhere. Please, now,
which is which of you?"

"That's Paul Fosdick, Lois; and that's Lawrence Hastings. Gentlemen,
Mrs. Holton."

"Very glad to meet you, gentlemen. Odd, isn't it? that this should be
the first time!"

She gave them her hand in turn in her quick graceful way. Since marrying
into the family they had heard much of this Lois, and lo! their
preconceived notions of her went down with a bang. They had been misled
and deceived; she was not that sort of person at all! She had effected
as by a miracle a change in the atmosphere of the room. It was as though
the first daffodil had daringly lifted its head under a leaden February
sky. Amzi, prepared for an explosion, marveled that none had shaken the
house from its foundations. But while the masculine members of the
family yielded up their arms without a struggle their wives were
fortifying themselves against the invader. Amzi's conduct was wholly
reprehensible; he had no right to permit and sanction Lois's return; the
possibilities implied in her coming were tremendous and far-reaching. It
was a staggering blow, this unlooked-for return. While their husbands
stood grinning before the shameless woman, they conferred in glances,
furtively looking from each other to the prodigal. Amzi fortified
himself with another glass of eggnog.

Lois had dominated the scene from the moment of her appearance. Her
entrance had been the more startling by reason of its very simplicity.
She was taking everything as a matter of course, quite as though there
were nothing extraordinary in the parting of the waters to afford her
passage dry shod, through those sixteen years, to a promised land
imaginably represented by Montgomery. Her sisters, huddled by the center
table, struggled against their impotence to seize the situation. This
was not their idea of the proper return of a woman who had sinned
against Heaven, to say nothing of the house of Montgomery. Their course
was the more difficult by reason of their ignorance of the cause of her
descent upon them. Amzi should suffer for this; but first she must be
dealt with; and they meant to deal with her. Their rage surged the more
hotly as they saw their husbands' quick capitulation. They, too, should
be dealt with!

"Let