alid, and had
grown to depend on me more or less in many ways. She could not live in
Boston, for the climate did not suit her. If Jack and I had not
written each other so often, we should have drifted far apart; but, as
it was, I think our love and friendship grew closer year by year. I
should have begged him to come to live with me; but he was always in a
hurry to get back to his own city and his own friends when he
sometimes came over to pay us a visit in my aunt's lifetime, and I
knew he would not be contented in Florence.

At Aunt Alice's death I went on with the same old life for a time from
force of habit; and it was just then, when I was with some friends in
the Tyrol, and had been wondering what plans I should make for the
winter,--whether to go to Egypt again, or to have some English friends
come to me in Florence,--that Jack's letter came. I was only too glad
that he made the proposal, and I could not resist sending him a cable
despatch to say, "Hurrah!" I had not realized before how lonely and
adrift I had felt since Aunt Alice died. I had a host of kind friends;
but there is nothing like being with one's own kindred, and having
one's own home. It was very hard work to say so many good-byes; and my
heart had almost failed me when I saw some of my friends for, it might
be, the last time, as some of them were old people. And, though I said
over and over again that I should come back in a year or two, who
could be certain that I should take up the dear familiar life again?
But, though I had been so many long years away from dear old Boston, I
never had been so glad in my life to catch sight of any city as I was
that chilly, late October morning, when I came on deck, and somebody
pointed out to me a dull glitter of something that looked higher and
brighter than the land, and said it was the dome of the State House.

I felt more sure than ever that I was going home when I saw my brother
standing on the wharf, and I remembered so clearly many of the streets
we drove through; and when we came to the house itself, and the
carriage had gone, and we stood in the library together where the very
same books were in the cases, and the same dim old Turkey carpet on
the floor, the years seemed suddenly to vanish, and it was like the
dear old childish days again: only where were my mother and my father?
And Jack was growing gray, as he had written me, and so much had
happened to me since I had been in that room last! I sat d