herself into his arms.

"I've come to take you home with me, Momma dear," he said quietly, using
the old name for her, which had been banished from the Emery household
since Lydia's early childhood. The sound of it went to her heart.

The newcomer smiled at her over his mother's head. It was her father's
smile, the quaint, half-wistful, humorous smile, which had seemed so
incongruous on the Judge's powerful face. "I'm your brother Harry,
little Lyddie," he said, "and I've come to take care of poor Momma."

During all that summer it was a bitter regret to Lydia that she had seen
her brother so short a time. He had decreed that the sooner his mother
was taken away from Endbury, the better for her, and Mrs. Emery had
clung to him, assenting passively to all he said, and peering
constantly, with tear-blurred eyes, into his face to see again his
astonishing resemblance to his father. They had left the day after his
arrival.

He had found time, however, to go out to Bellevue for a brief visit, to
see Lydia's home and her little daughter--Paul was away on a business
trip--and the half-hour he spent there was one that Lydia never forgot.
The tall, sunburned Westerner, with his kind, humorous eyes, his
affectionate smile, his quaint, homely phrases, haunted the house for
the rest of the summer. The time of his stay had been too breathlessly
short for any serious talk. He had looked about at the big, handsome
house with a half-mocking awe, inspected the "grounds" with a lively
interest in the small horticultural beginnings Lydia had been able to
achieve, told her she ought to see his two hundred acres of apple-trees;
and for the time that was left before his trolley-car was due he played
with his little niece and talked over her head to his sister.

"She's a dandy, Lyddie! She's a jim-dandy of a little girl! She ought to
come out and learn to ride straddle with her cousins. I got a boy about
her age--say, they'd look fine together! He's a towhead, like all the
rest of 'em--like their mother."

For months afterward Lydia could close her eyes and see again the
transfigured expression that had come over his face at the mention of
his wife. "Talk about luck!" he said, after a moment's pause, "there
never was such luck as my getting Annie. Say, I wish you could know her,
Lyddie. I tell you what--shoulder to shoulder, every minute, she's stood
up to things right there beside me for twelve years--Lord! It don't seem
more than six