know it
couldn't possibly be!"

Then I hurried into some recital about the Topladys, whose big barn and
little house were lined faintly out as if something were making them
feel hushed; and about Friendship, hidden in the valley as if it were
suddenly of lesser import--how strange that these things should be there
as they were an hour ago. And so we came to Oldmoxon House and went up
the walk in silence save that, at the steps, "How long shall I tell them
to boil your eggs?" I asked desperately, to still the quite ridiculous
singing of the known world. But then the singing took one voice, a voice
whose firmness made it almost hard, save that deep within it something
was beating....

"You know," said the voice simply, "if I come in now, I come to stay.
You _do_ know?"

"You come to breakfast...." I tried it.

"I come to stay."

"You mean--"

"I come to stay."

I rather hoped to affirm something gracious, and masterful of
myself--not to say of him; but suddenly that whole lonely year was back
again, most of it in my throat. And though I gave up saying anything at
all, I cannot have been unintelligible. Indeed, I know that I was not
unintelligible, for when, in a little while, Calliope, who was still
with me, opened my front door and emerged briskly to the veranda, she
seems to have understood in a minute.

"Well said!" Calliope cried, and made a little swoop down from the
threshold and stood before us, one hand in mine and one outstretched for
his; "I knew, as soon as I woke up this morning, I felt special. I
thought it was my soul, sittin' up in my chest, an' wantin' me to spry
round with it some, like it does. But I guess now it was this. Oh,
this!" she said. "Oh, I sp'ose I'd rilly ought to hev an introduction
before I jump up an' down, hadn't I?"

"No need in the world, Calliope," he told her; "come on. I'll jump,
too."

And that was an added joy--that he had read and re-read that one
Friendship letter of mine, written on the night of Delia More's return,
until it was as if he, too, knew Calliope. But before all things was the
wonder of the justice and the grace which had made the letter of that
night, when I, too, "took stock," yield such return.

It was Calliope who led the way indoors at last, and he and I who
followed like her guests. From the edges of consciousness I finally drew
some discernment of the place of coffee and rolls in a beneficent
universe, and presently we three sat at his breakfas