ossible the meeting
which she also dreaded, for though the Camerons were too proud to
express before her their opinion of Wilford's choice, she had guessed it
readily, and pitied the young wife brought up with ideas so different
from those of her husband's family. More accustomed to Wilford's moods
than Katy, she saw that something was the matter, and it prompted her to
unusual attentions, stirring the fire into a still more cheerful blaze
and bringing a stool for Katy, who in blissful ignorance of her
husband's real feelings, sat waiting his return from the telegraph
office, whither she supposed he had gone, and building pleasant pictures
of to-morrow's meeting with her mother and Helen, and possibly Dr.
Morris, if not Uncle Ephraim himself.

The voyage home had been long and wearisome, and Katy, who had suffered
from seasickness, was feeling jaded and tired, wishing, as she told
Esther, that instead of going to New York direct she could go straight
to the farmhouse and "rest on mother's bed," that receptacle for all her
childish ills.

"I mean to ask Wilford if I may," she said to herself, and her cheeks
grew brighter as she thought of really going home to mother and Helen
and the kind old people who would pet and love her so much.

So absorbed was she in her reverie as not to hear Wilford's step as he
came in, but when he stood behind her and took her head playfully
between his hands, she started up, feeling that the weather had changed;
it was not as cold and dreary in Boston as she imagined, neither did
mother's bed seem as desirable a place to rest upon as the shoulder
where she laid her head, playing with Wilford's buttons, and saying to
him at last:

"You went out to telegraph, didn't you?"

He had gone out with the intention of telegraphing as she desired, but
in the hall below he had met with an old acquaintance who talked with
him so long that he entirely forgot his errand until Katy recalled it to
his mind, making him feel very uncomfortable as he frankly told her of
his forgetfulness.

"It is too late now," he added; "besides you could only see them for a
moment, just long enough to make you cry--a thing I do not greatly
desire, inasmuch as I wish my wife to look her best when I present her
to my family, and with red eyes she couldn't, you know."

Katy knew it was settled, and choking back her tears she tried to
listen, while Wilford, having fairly broken the ice with regard to his
family, told her