serted spring-house. It was the one
enchanted spot of Kitty's life.

Half an hour afterward they found old Peter playing on his violin at
the doorstep. Kitty had often planned an effective bringing back of
Hugh to him, but she forgot it all, and creeping up put her hands
about his neck. "Father! look there, father!" she whispered.

The Book-house still stands among its walnuts in Berrytown. But a
shrewd young fellow from New York has charge of it now, who deals
principally in school-books and publications relative to Reforms
and raspberries. Old Peter Guinness still holds an interest in it,
although his chief business is that of special agent for libraries in
buying rare books and pamphlets. He comes down for two or three weeks
in winter to look into matters. But since his wife died he makes his
home in Delaware with his son, who married, as all Berrytown knows,
Kitty Vogdes after she behaved so shamefully to Mr. Muller.

Mrs. Guinness died in high good-humor with her son-in-law. "Doctor
McCall," she assured her neighbors, "was exactly the man she should
have chosen for Catharine. She had known him from a boy, and knew
that his high social position and wealth were only his deserts. A
member--vestryman indeed--of St. Luke's Church, the largest in Sussex
county."

The farm-people in the sleepy, sunny Delaware neighborhood have
elected Kitty a chief favorite. "A gentle, good-natured little woman,
with no opinions of her own. A bit too fond of dress perhaps, and a
silly, doting mother, but the most neighborly, lovable creature alive,
after all."

Miss Muller was down in St. George's lecturing last fall, and made
her mark, as she always does. But the Guinness men were now hopelessly
conservative. She made her home with Kitty.

"A fine woman," old Peter said the morning after she was gone.

"Never knew a woman with a finer mind," said Hugh. "Nor many men."

"She nurses that dog as if it were a baby," said Kitty sharply. "It's
silly! It's disgusting!"

Peter twanged his bow on the porch, looking down over the great
farm-slopes stretching away in the morning light.

"We have everything to make life good to us, Hugh," he said after
Kitty had gone. "And the best thing, to my notion, is an old-fashioned
woman in the house, with no notion of ruling, like that Muller girl
and her set."

Hugh was romping with his boy: "Do you know your first business in
this world, sir? To take care of your mother," glancing at the gard