In her absence he invariably
unpacked and used it, and of course Cynthia at once set herself to
cleaning and packing it again. After that she got her own supper--a very
simple affair--and was putting the sitting room to rights when Ephraim
came thumping in.

"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed when he saw her. "I didn't look for you to
come back so soon, Cynthy. Put up the kit--hev you?" He stood in front of
the fireplace staring with apparent interest at the place where the kit
had been, and added in a voice which he strove to make quite casual, "How
be Jethro?"

"He looks older, Cousin Eph," she answered, after a pause, "and I think
he is very tired. But he seems he seems more tranquil and contented than
I hoped to find him."

"I want to know," said Ephraim. "I am glad to hear it. Glad you went up,
Cynthy--you done right to go.

"I'd have gone with you, if you'd only told me. I'll git a chance to go
up Sunday."

There was an air of repressed excitement about the veteran which did not
escape Cynthia. He held two letters in his hand, and, being a postmaster,
he knew the handwriting on both. One had come from that place in New
Jersey, and drew no comment. But the other! That one had been postmarked
at the capital, and as he had sat at his counter at the post-office
waiting for closing time he bad turned it over and over with many
ejaculations and futile guesses. Past master of dissimulation that he
was, he had made up his mind--if he should find Cynthia at home--to lay
the letters indifferently on the table and walk into his bedroom. This
campaign he now proceeded to carry out.

Cynthia smiled again when he was gone, and shook her head and picked up
the letters: Bob's was uppermost and she read that first, without a
thought of the other one. And she smiled as she read for Bob had had a
promotion. He was not yet at the head of the locomotive works, he
hastened to add, for fear that Cynthia might think that Mr. Broke had
resigned the presidency in his favor; and Cynthia never failed to laugh
at these little facetious asides. He was now earning the princely sum of
ninety dollars a month--not enough to marry on, alas! On Saturday nights
he and Percy Broke scrubbed as much as possible of the grime from their
hands and faces and went to spend Sunday at Elberon, the Broke place on
the Hudson; from whence Miss Sally Broke, if she happened to be at home,
always sent Cynthia her love. As Cynthia is still a heroine, I shall not
d