terly worn out," the man replied with a
laugh. "Yes, mother, if tea is ready let's come along. We can talk
during the meal."

They passed into the parlour. As they seated themselves at the table,
Sarah Gurridge joined them from her place beside the stove. Hervey
had not noticed her presence when he first entered the room, and the
good school-ma'am, quietly day-dreaming, had barely awakened to the
fact of his coming. Now she, too, joined in the enthusiasm of the
moment.

"Ah, Hervey," she said, with that complacent air of proprietorship
which our early preceptors invariably assume, "you haven't forgotten
me, I know.

'Though the tempest of life will oft shut out the past,
The thoughts of our school-days remain to the last.'"

"Glad to see you, Mrs. Gurridge. No, I haven't forgotten you," the man
replied.

A slight pause followed. The women-folk had so much to say that they
hardly knew where to begin. That trifling hesitation might have been
accounted for by this fact. Or it might have been that Hervey was less
overjoyed at his home-coming than were his mother and sister.

Prudence was the first to speak.

"Funny that I should have set a place more than I intended at the
tea-table," she said, "and funnier still that when I found out what
I'd done I didn't remove the plate and things. And now you turn up."
She laughed joyously.

Sarah Gurridge looked over in the girl's direction and shook an
admonitory forefinger at her.

"Mr. Grey, my dear--you were thinking of Mr. Grey, in spite of your
lover's tiff."

"Who did you say?" asked Hervey, with a quick glance at Prudence.

"Leslie Grey," said his mother, before the old school-ma'am could
reply. "Didn't our Prudence tell you when she wrote? He's the man
she's going to marry. I must say he's not the man I should have set
on for her; but she's got her own ploughing to seed, and I'm not the
one to say her 'nay' when she chooses her man."

Hervey busied himself with his food, nor did he look up when he
spoke.

"That was Grey, I s'pose, I saw riding away as I came up? Good,
square-set chunk of a man."

"Yes, he left just before you came," said Prudence. "But never mind
about him, brother. Tell us about yourself. Have you made a fortune?"

"For sure, he must," said their mother, gazing with round, proud eyes
upon her boy, "for how else came he to travel from California to here,
just to set his eyes on us and see a slip of a girl take to herself a