home that night, and Allyn's nose grew quite white at the tip, as he pressed it against the windowpane, in a futile effort to see still farther up the street.

Theodora, meanwhile, sat watching the familiar landscape sweeping backward past the windows of the express train. She knew it all by heart, the low hillocks crowned with clusters of shaggy oaks still thick with unshed leaves, the strips of salt marsh with the haycocks like gigantic beehives, the peeps of blue sea, sail-dotted or crossed by a thin line of smoke, and the neat little towns so characteristic of southern New England. Impulsively she turned to her husband.

"Oh, don't you pity Hope, Billy?"

"What for?"

"To live out there. I suppose Archie's business makes it a necessity; but
I do wish he would come back and settle down near us."

"He would be like a bull in a china shop, Teddy. Fancy Archie Holden, after having all the Rocky Mountains for his workshop, coming back and settling down into one of these bandboxy little towns! He is better off, out there."

"Perhaps. But isn't it good to get back again?"

He looked at her in some perplexity.

"I thought you were having such a good time, Ted."

"I was, a beautiful one; but I am so glad to see blue, deep water again. I was perfectly happy, while I was there; but now I feel as if I couldn't wait to be in our own home again, Billy, and gossip with you after dinner in the library. People are so in the way. It will be like a second honeymoon, with nobody to interrupt us."

He laughed at her enthusiasm.

"Old married people like us! But you will mourn for Mac, Ted; you know you will."

Forgetting the familiar landscape, she turned to face him with a laugh which chased all the dreaminess from her eyes.

"Billy Farrington! But did you ever know such a mockery of fate?"

"As Mac?"

"Yes, as Hope's having such a child?"

"It is a little incongruous."

"It is preposterous. Hope was always the meek angel of the household, and Archie is not especially obstreperous. But Mac—" Theodora's pause was expressive.

Billy laughed.

"He combines the face of an angel and the wisdom of a serpent," he remarked. "I don't know whether his morals or his vocabulary are more startling. Hope has her hands full; but she will find a way to manage him, even if she can't learn from her own childhood, as you could."

"Thank you, dear. Your compliments are always charming. Perhaps I wasn't an angel-child; but you generally aided and abetted me in my misdeeds. I do hope, though, that Mac will grow in grace before they come East, next summer."

Her husband glanced up, started slightly, then leaned back in his chair while a sudden look of amusement came into his blue eyes. The next moment, Theodora sprang up with a glad exclamation.

"Hu!"

The train had stopped, and a young man had come into the car, given a quick look at the passengers and then marched straight to Mrs. Farrington's chair. Resting his hands on her shoulders, he bent down and laid his cheek against hers, and Theodora, regardless of the people about her, turned and cast herself into his arms. Tall and lithe and singularly alike in face, it scarcely needed a second glance to show that they were not only brother and sister, but twins as well. Moreover, in spite of Hubert's successful business life and Theodora's devotion to her husband, the twins were as necessary to each other as the blades of a pair of scissors.

"How well you are looking! Have you missed me? Aren't you glad to see us back? How are they all at home?" she demanded breathlessly.

Her brother laughed, as he shook hands with Billy.

"Steady, Ted! One at a time. You haven't lost your old trick of asking questions. We are all well, and I left the mother alternately peering out of the front window of our house and punching up the pillows on the couch in your library."

"And papa?"

"Splendid, and covered with glory for his last operation on the Gaylord child. It is the talk of the town."

Theodora's eyes flashed proudly.

"Isn't he wonderful? If he had never had a patient but Billy, he might have been content. I wish you could be half the man he is, Hu."

"I do my endeavors, Ted."

"Yes, and you are a boy to be proud of, even if you aren't a doctor," she answered. "You look as if the last five months had agreed with you."

"They have, for I didn't have anybody around to torment me, and I grew fat and sleek from day to day. How is Hope?"

"As well as is compatible with being Mac's mother."

"What is the matter with him? You didn't write much."

"No; for I knew you wouldn't believe the half of my tales. Hu, the boy is an imp."

"He combines the least lovely traits of Teddy and Babe," Mr. Farrington remarked gravely.

"I was never half so original and daring as he is," Theodora said regretfully. "My iniquities were trite; his are fresh from the recesses of his own brain. He is a cunning child, Hu, and a pretty one; but his ways are past finding out, and—"

"And, as I said, he favors his Aunt Teddy," her husband interposed.

Theodora decided to change the subject.

"How is Allyn?" she asked.

Hubert's face sobered.

"He is well."

"Is anything the matter with the boy?" Theodora demanded, for Allyn had always been her own especial charge, and her marriage had made no break in their relations. Allyn's home was as much at the corner house as at The Savins.

"No; only the world goes hard with him. He has needed you, Teddy. The rest of us rub him the wrong way. He has a queer streak in him. I wish I could get hold of him; but I can't."

"It is the cross-grained age," Theodora said thoughtfully. "He will come out all right."

"Perhaps; but meanwhile he is having a bad time of it, for he can't get on with any of the boys. He lords it over them, and then resents it and sulks, if they rebel. Where does he get it, Ted? We weren't like that."

"It is too bad," she said slowly; "but I'll see what I can do with him."

"He has needed you, Teddy; that is a fact. Even the mother can't get on with him as you do. You're going to stay at home now for a while; aren't you?"

"Yes; we are going to have a perfect honeymoon of quiet. We have wandered enough, and we don't mean to budge again for the next ten years. I am going to write, all day long; and, when twilight falls, Billy and I will draw our elbow chairs to the fire, and sit and gossip and nod over the andirons till bedtime. We haven't had an hour to ourselves for five months, and now we must make up for lost time."

Hubert laughed.

"You are as bad as ever. When do I come in?"

"On Sundays. I expect a McAlister dinner party, every Sunday night. Otherwise, four times a day. We have three elbow chairs, you know, and the hearth is a broad one."

"You haven't asked after Phebe," Hubert said, after a pause.

"What was the use? Billy had a letter from his mother, the day we left
Helena, and I knew you would have had nothing later."

"But we have."

"What?"

"She sailed for home, to-day, on the Kaiserina."

"Hubert!"