ethod of travel bounced into the room like a wonderfully animated ball
at the sound of his voice, and he actually swept the two hundred pounds
of her off of her feet as he gathered the big woman up into his arms
and kissed her. Then Julia dabbed at her eyes and fled to her kitchen,
her emotions finding outlet in an instantaneous desire to make him a
pie, Wanda laid a plate for him and supper went on.

Chiefly because of Wanda's eager questions and Wayne Shandon's laughing
willingness to tell about his adventures, the abstraction on the part
of Martin Leland and the growing anxiety in Mrs. Leland's eyes went
unnoticed. Wayne was immoderately hungry as he first frankly confided
and then demonstrated, but he found opportunity between mouthfuls to
draw, in his sketchy way, the series of pictures which made up the year
of his wanderings. He had travelled from New York to London, he had
whizzed through Paris and dipped into Baden, he had been seasick on a
Mediterranean which wasn't blue, he had barked his shins on a pyramid,
he had been swindled out of a ridiculously large sum of money by a
little scientist in green spectacles who was out on a mummy digging
expedition, and he had gone into the interior after big game. He had
managed to take in a Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte
Carlo recognise that he had come,--although he did not go into detail
as to the manner of his departure,--and he had brought home a present
for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some
remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created
no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the
dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the
enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl for Mrs.
Leland, selected evidently for size and brilliance of pattern, very
nearly large enough to carpet the dining room and of an astonishing
combination of dark greens and riotous reds and royal purples; an
ornate scarf pin for Martin Leland who had as much use for a scarf pin
as a Mohammedan for a Bible; an exquisite set of chessmen for Garth
purchased with a quick eye to the subtle art which had gone into their
carving and with a fine disregard for the fact that Garth had existed
for thirty odd years without learning that the curveting progress of a
knight is in any way different from the ecclesiastical slant of a
bishop, completed the assortment of presents.

Garth h