The next day was Sunday, and after our one o’clock dinner Fan and I started for the cemetery on the hillside, accompanied by Carl. We had omitted taking flowers early in the morning, but we had them with us now, and Carl carried them for us and asked many questions about our brother as we went slowly across the fields.

“Shot at Fredericksburg,” he said. “That’s where a cousin of mine was killed, if he were killed at all. We tracked him to that battle, or thought we did, and have never heard of him since.”

Neither Fan nor I made any reply, and he went on: “He was several years older than I, but too young to go to the war. He lived with us and I loved him like a brother, and when I really made up my mind that he was dead I cried myself sick, and now I am sometimes so lonesome for Paul that I want to cry just as I did then. It is hard to believe he is dead, with no proof of it, and every night I pray that he may come back to us, or that we may know for sure what became of him. You pray, don’t you? I heard Annie in church this morning, but not a peep from you. I don’t believe you said the creed.”

He was speaking to Fan, who answered rather shortly, “I prayed so much for the success of the south during the war, and we failed so utterly that I have about lost faith in prayer, and have come to think that what is to be will be, and we can’t help ourselves; so what is the use of praying? Didn’t the north pray with all their might that their army might be victors, and didn’t we do the same, and wern’t we just as much in earnest as you were, and which did the Lord hear?”

“Our side, of course, because we were right, and had the most men and money. You shouldn’t have been a Reb if you wanted the Lord to hear you. What could you do against the Lord and such hordes as we had to fight you with?” Carl said, while Fan tossed her head high in the air, but did not continue the conversation.

We were in the enclosure now under the pine trees and were laying the flowers we had brought upon the four graves, our mother’s, Katy’s mother’s, Charlie’s and The Boy’s. Carl was reading the inscriptions on the tombstones, first mother’s, then Katy’s mother’s, then Charlie’s, over which he lingered. “Only nineteen; he would be twenty-three now, that’s a little older than Paul, if he were living. Halloo! what does this mean, ‘The Boy, who died Good Friday, 1863.’ That’s a queer inscription. Who was The Boy?”

“We don’t know,” Fan said, sitting down on an iron chair near the grave and clasping her hands at the back of her head.

Carl looked at her mystified and curious.

“He was one of your people,” she continued, “and I hated you all, until he came to us and died, with his hand in mine, hurrahing for me. I haven’t hated anybody since. Would you like to hear his story?”

“Yes,” Carl said, and leaning upon the stone he listened while Fan told the story in all its details as only she could tell it.

At its close Carl was down upon the grassy mound, crushing the flowers we had put there, and sobbing bitterly, “Paul, Paul,—it was Paul! I have found him at last dead, and I had hoped he might come back to me alive. Oh, Paul, I am so sorry for everything.”

We were all crying now, and surely over no soldier’s grave, north or south, east or west, was sadder moan ever made than over that of The Boy that summer afternoon years and years ago. Whatever of wrong there had been in Carl’s treatment of Paul it was atoned for, if tears can atone for a wrong done to the dead. I had never seen a man or boy cry as Carl cried, with his face upon the grass.

“Don’t,” Fan said at last. “Don’t you remember that he bade us tell you he liked you?”

“Yes, I know, and it’s that which hurts, and the knowing for sure that he is dead,” Carl answered, lifting up his head and wiping away his tears. “I have dreamed so often that he came back that I have almost made myself believe that he would, and I have planned so many things to do when he came. Strange, too, that he has been so often in my mind since I came here. You told me that your woods were often full of Federal troops, and many times at the picnic I was saying to myself, ‘Was Paul ever here? Did he see this waterfall, or sleep under that big tree near which they said camp fires were built?’ and now I am by his grave, and you cared for him when he died. Tell me more, if there is more to tell.”

There was not much, except to show the letter dictated by Charlie and written by The Boy. This, with the lock of hair and the knife and jews-harp Fan had purposely brought with her, meaning to tell the story to Carl just as she had told it. The writing was a scrawl, for the hand which wrote it was throbbing with pain, but Carl identified it as Paul’s by the capitals and the formation of some of the letters. The hair and jews-harp and knife he remembered perfectly, and cried again as he held them in his hand.

“If I had been beaten in his place, as I ought to have been he might not have run away, but I was a coward and a sneak,” he said referring to a theft of cake which had been charged to Paul and not denied because he wished to shield his cousin.

The memory of this seemed to hurt Carl the most, and he went over the incident again and again, ending always with the cry, “If I could only take it back.” Then he told us briefly what there was to tell of Paul, whose last name was also Haverleigh, as their fathers had been brothers. Both Paul’s parents had died when he was young, and he had been, in a way, adopted by his Aunt Martha, who was very fond of him until the birth of Carl, when there came a change.

“I suppose my being her own naturally made a difference,” Carl said, “and I know now there was a difference, although mother might not have intended any. I was a spoiled child, and Paul was a lively, wide-awake boy, who, with nothing bad about him, was constantly getting me and himself into scrapes, which mother, with her strict notions, thought awful. Sometimes we were sent to bed or set on hard chairs until they must have ached; I am sure we did. She never inflicted corporal punishment upon Paul but once, and that was about the cake which she thought he stole and lied about. So she thrashed him, and he was nearly as old as I am now. ‘Too big to be licked,’ he said, and ran away. Where he went at first I do not know, and shall never know now, but after the war broke out we traced him, or thought we did, to the army as a drummer boy. Then mother went to Europe for two years, leaving me at school. When she came home she did try to find him and was almost sure he was at Fredericksburg, and that is all. Does mother know?” he asked, and Fan replied, “I have told her the story just as I told it to you. She could draw her own conclusions.”

For a moment Carl was silent, and then he asked, “Did she give no sign that she understood?”

“She cried and has put flowers on his grave every Sunday since,” was Fan’s answer, and Carl continued: “Yes, she knows, and she is sorry,—more sorry than you think. Mother is a good woman, who means to do right, but, unfortunately, her ideas run in a groove too narrow and deep for her to get them out easily. She is Puritanical all through,—great, great, great and double great something of Miles Standish and the Mayflower. I don’t care a fig for either, but I love my mother, and I want you to love her, too. It will be better all round. She is quick to reciprocate, and isn’t a bad sort by a long shot,—a little stiff, that’s all; and if she didn’t own up about Paul, it was a kind of pride which kept her silent. If you told the Aunt Martha part with half the vim you told it to me, she could have no doubt of your opinion of her, and it required a good deal of pluck for her to say ‘I am that woman.’ But she will do it. She’ll tell me Paul is here, and she’ll tell you that she is Aunt Martha, and propose a big monument for Paul and Charlie.”

“No, no,” Fan interposed. “We knew your cousin as The Boy, and as such he must remain. We can have no tall monument here.”

On our return to the house we found Mrs. Hathern sitting on the piazza. Katy, to whom she had been teaching her duty towards her neighbor, had fallen asleep with her head on her stepmother’s lap, while Mrs. Hathern’s hand was lying lightly on the child’s yellow curls. It was a very pretty picture of domestic happiness, and I began to think that, as Carl had said, his mother was not a bad sort after all. There was an anxious, worried look on her face as we came up the steps, on which we all sat down, as the day was very hot.

“Carl,” she began, with a lump in her throat, “you have been to Paul’s grave and have heard how kindly he was cared for by Fanny and Annie?”

Carl nodded, and she went on: “It was a shock to me to know that he was here. You told your sisters, I hope, how we tried to trace him?”

“Yes, I told them everything,” Carl answered, and she continued: “I am glad you did. I couldn’t tell them when I first knew about it. I simply couldn’t, and I waited for you to come. I would give a great deal to have Paul back alive, but as that cannot be, I am glad to know where he is lying; and if you think best we will have him removed to our family lot in Mt. Auburn.”

“Never, no, never,” and Fan sprang to her feet. “He is our Boy. He died with us; we buried him; we loved him. He was ours, and we must keep him here with Charlie.”

“You shall, if you feel like that,” Mrs. Hathern said, “and both Carl and I are more thankful than we can express for the kindness he received from you all. I told your father while you were at his grave, and it affected him greatly. It is strange that our families should be thus brought together, and I hope that the memory of Paul may be a bond of sympathy and kindly feeling between us.”

She held out her hand first to Fanny and then to me, and as we took it we felt that there had already commenced a better understanding between us than had existed before.

“I told you she would face the music, and for her she did it handsomely,” Carl said, when we were alone with him. “She knows she was to blame, and if I were you, I wouldn’t nag her about him any more.”

This he said to Fan, who only answered with a flash of her black eyes. But we understood what he meant, and Paul was never mentioned by us in her presence unless she spoke of him first, which she seldom did. A monument, which should have both his and Charlie’s name upon it, was suggested by her and vetoed by us all. He came to us as the Boy; he died the Boy, and the Boy he must always be to us, a sacred memory, which united the Hatherns and Haverleighs more closely and proved a bond of sympathy and friendship between us and our stepmother.

Looking back through a vista of years and turning some blotted pages of Carl’s life, when temptation got the better of him, I cannot recall a pleasanter summer than that which he spent with us at the Elms. He was so bright and suggestive and thoughtful for every one, and so anxious to please and make the best of everything that he carried sunshine wherever he went. It was a rare gift he possessed of winning all hearts to him, and Fan and I learned more than one lesson of forbearance and toleration from him, although we laughed at him as a prig and should have called him a dude, had the word then been invented.

With the townspeople he was very popular, especially with the young girls, who seemed suddenly to have grown very fond of Fan and myself, and who came to our house at all hours of the day. We had not supposed that Mrs. Hathern cared much for young people, but she was very gracious to Carl’s friends. She gave us teas on the lawn and lunches on the piazza, and played for us to dance in the drawing room and planned excursions for us so that the summer was one long holiday, with Carl as the central figure.

It was September when he left us for Andover, and there were nearly as many people at the station to see him off as there used to be when our soldiers left us for the war. Naturally, after so much pleasant intercourse we expected a great deal of pleasure from his letters. But here we were disappointed. He wrote to us often at first, telling us of his life at Andover, but evincing little interest in the people of Lovering, who remembered him so kindly and spoke of him so often. Then his letters grew shorter and less frequent, and when Fan berated him for it, he gave as an excuse that he was very busy with his studies, trying to fit himself to enter Harvard the next year.

“But whether I write often, or not at all, you may be sure that you are always in my mind and that I love you dearly,” he wrote, and signed himself, “Your loving brother, Carl.”

“Nonsense,” Fan said. “It is a clear case of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ He was pleased with us when here, but now we are like names written on the sands of the sea which the first wave washes away. Carl is nice, but fickle.”

The autumn following Carl’s visit to us passed with little to break the monotony of our lives. Miss Errington wrote occasionally, full of solicitude with regard to Katy’s music, which was progressing so rapidly as to astonish both Fan and myself, and even Mrs. Hathern, who was a thorough and exacting teacher. Jack wrote often and Fan answered when she felt like it. She had not yet made up her mind to be the wife of a poor man, and until she did she could not encourage Jack in his foolishness. Col. Errington did not write again and his proposal of marriage remained unanswered.

“I am very well as I am, and quite chummy with Mrs. Hathern, who has really contributed a great deal to our bodily comfort. I do not want a change as much as I did, and as long as I have two strings to my bow and can choose either at any moment, I am content,” she said, and took the good the gods had provided and laughed over Jack’s love-letters, which were becoming importunate and impatient as he longed for something to work for and hope for and keep his courage up.

As for the household, it moved on with a regularity which no one but Mrs. Hathern could have achieved.

One or two jars there were when Phyllis’s turban was frightfully awry and Norah’s shoes could be heard all over the house; but, for the most part, they were on amicable terms and both united in their antipathy to Julina, who was growing more airy and important every day, and more disinclined to believe in that portion of the catechism which bade her to be content with the condition of life to which it had pleased God to call her. “Who would ever get on in the world if they followed that injunction?” she said, and what was our democratic government good for if it didn’t give everyone an equal chance to rise if he had the brain and will to do so? And she meant to rise. She had once had her fortune told by a clairvoyant in Boston who predicted that she would some day be a great lady, with money and influence at her command. This she communicated confidentially to Fan and me as the secret of her ambition and belief in the future. And at last there came a rift in the clouds,—an opening through which she caught a glimpse of the future she felt so sure of. Her father died suddenly, and the letter which brought the news enclosed one from an aunt in France inviting Julina, who was her namesake, to visit her for as long a time as she chose to stay. Here was her opportunity, and she took it and left us at once, so full of her aunt’s chateau, which, she said, was not far from Fontainebleau, that she came near forgetting to mourn for her father, who had never been much to her.

Two or three weeks later Carl wrote that he had seen her in Boston and that she was to sail for Havre in a few days. Afterwards he sent us a list of passengers on a French steamer, and among them was the name Mademoiselle Julina Smythe, who for years passed completely out of our knowledge and then reappeared in a most unexpected manner.

Christmas came and went, and the winter glided into spring and spring into the first days of June, when the world,—or, at least, that part which Lovering represented,—was full of the beauty and brightness and fragrance of early summer. Never before had our grounds and garden been as lovely and attractive as they were now. Money and taste can do almost everything, and Mrs. Hathern had both, and had expended them freely upon The Elms, which she meant to make the show place in the county. It was exceedingly pretty now, with its grassy lawn, its urns and baskets of various designs and sizes, its rustic chairs and stands for books or work or tea, and its garden full of flowers. After all, it was not a bad thing that father did when he married Mrs. Haverleigh, who had brought us so much luxury and to whom we were getting quite reconciled. She had been so much softer and more companionable since Carl’s visit and our talk with her of The Boy that I began to like her; while Fan, who was slow to change her mind, admitted that things might be worse, and if——. There is nearly always an “if” in every cup of happiness, and ours was so unlooked-for and seemed so undesirable that for a time we refused to accept it as dutiful daughters ought to have done. But there was no alternative; we could not run away, for there was no place to run to, and after a while we made up our minds to submit as gracefully as we could to the inevitable.

In due time a trained nurse arrived from Boston, and a few days later father went in and out of his bed-chamber with an anxious look and frequent demands on Phyllis, who, in her excitement, forgot to put on her turban and seemed like one distraught as she hovered between the kitchen and the sick-room; while Fan and I, with Katy between us, sat under an elm in the farthest part of the grounds and waited, wondering what Carl would say when he heard the news. Norah brought us our lunch, which we ate on the little willow table where we had often had our tea. Her face was cloudy and her shoes creaked even on the grass, showing us her opinion of the matter. I remember so well every incident of that long day,—the glints of sunshine through the trees, the scent of the flowers, the blue of the sky, the twitter and almost human talk of two robins teaching their young ones to fly, and, at last, as the evening wore on and we heard the town clock strike two, Phyllis coming to us across the lawn, her face all aglow with the news she had to tell.

“You’ve done got a little brudder,” she said, “an’ oh! my Lord, he’s dat small. I reckon he could wear one of Miss Katy’s doll dresses. Will you come to the house and I’ll fotch him to you?”

“No, thank you,” Fan said, with a disdainful toss of her head. “I am in no hurry to see my little brother.”

What Fan did, I generally did, and against my better judgment I, too, sat still, but asked, “How is Mrs. Hathern?”

“Mighty bad, I s’pecs, by the way old Mas’r looks and that Boston nuss. She hasn’t seen her baby at all an’ she’s as white as a piece of paper, and keeps moanin’ like.”

“Do you think she will die?” Fan asked, with a ring in her voice which reminded me of the days when we were watching by The Boy.

“Oh, de good Lord forbid!” was Phyllis’s ejaculation. “What could we do with a new bawn baby and the mother dead?”

What, indeed, and why was he sent to us, we asked ourselves, as we sat watching Phyllis going swiftly across the lawn with Katy in advance. Katy was happy, and her first exclamation as she sped away from us was, “Oh, I am so glad, and can I see him now?”

I don’t know how long Fan and I sat discussing the situation, she threatening to answer Col. Errington’s letter and I proposing to make the best of what could not be helped. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps it was more, when Phyllis appeared again, holding her apron to her eyes with one hand and beckoning us wildly with the other.

“Mrs. Hathern is done took wus, and has as’t for you,” she said.

In an instant we were on our feet, flying towards the house, Fan, as usual, outstripping me and thinking with remorse of the bitter things she had said of the innocent baby, whose plaintive wail we heard as we entered the hall. In every woman’s heart, be she ever so bad and hard, there is a motherly instinct which, under certain conditions, will assert itself. We were neither very hard nor very bad. We were only rebelling as grown-up daughters sometimes do against the introduction in their midst of a baby, and especially when that baby is the offspring of a stepmother. We had not wanted the stepmother, and we didn’t want the baby; but when its faint cry came to us Fan clutched my arm and whispered, “Oh, Ann, hear the poor little thing. I hope its mother won’t die.”

It seemed to me very probable that she would, when I entered her room and saw her lying there so motionless upon her pillows, with every particle of her bright color gone from her face, which looked pinched and haggard and old for a woman of only forty. She had never seemed more than thirty-five. Her eyes were closed and we might have thought her asleep, but for a fluttering of the lids and a movement of her hand as the rustle of our dresses broke the stillness of the room. Katy, who had been fondling the baby, which a negro woman was caring for in an adjoining room, had joined us, and when she saw the white face so changed from what it had been the previous night, when it looked the picture of health, she ran up to father, who was sitting at the side of the bed, and cried out, “Oh, papa, what is it? What makes her look so? Is she very sick?”

A warning sh—— came from the nurse, who was moistening the patient’s lips with some stimulant; but at the sound of Katy’s voice, Mrs. Hathern moved slightly and opened the great black eyes of which we had stood so much in awe. There was nothing to fear from them now, and it seemed to me there was in them a look of wonderful tenderness and love as they rested upon the little girl who was bending close to her.

“Katy,” she said, putting her hand upon the curly head which nestled down beside her as Katy asked again, “Are you very sick, mamma, and do you know about the baby? We’ve got one in the other room. Old Chloe brought him this morning, with a heap of clothes. I’m so glad.”

A faint smile showed around Mrs. Hathern’s mouth and her hand pressed more heavily upon the golden curls.

“Yes, Katy,” she said, very low as if talking were an effort, “I know about the baby, and I want you to love him and care for him if I should go away. Will you, Katy?”

Just so, ten years before, Katy’s mother, in that very room, had spoken to Fan and me, and the scene came back to us so vividly,—the young mother dying and commending to us the little life which had just begun and had since grown to be a part of our whole being. Now it was another mother, and Katy to whom the charge was given, and for a moment I think we both felt chagrined that we should be forgotten; but only for a moment. Turning her eyes towards us, they shone with a strange light of satisfaction as she said, in detached sentences, “Fanny and Annie, I am glad you have come. I want to tell you it was my way that was in fault, not my heart, and I am sorry for all that has gone wrong. You like Carl; try and like my little baby. I know he is not welcome, and when I am gone he may be still less so; he is not to blame. Perhaps God will take him with me; if not, be kind to him, for his father’s sake, and—” She stopped a few moments as if tired out and then resumed, as her eyes wandered around the room, “Where is Fanny?”

“Here I am,” Fan answered, sitting down upon the edge of the bed and taking in hers the cold, clammy hand which was moving restlessly. “Here I am; do you want to tell me something?”

“Yes. About the little baby. Would you object to calling him Paul Haverleigh, after The Boy?”

“No, no; I’d like it,” Fan answered with a choking voice, for, with that subtle intuition which we cannot define, she felt the dark shadow stealing into the room and settling upon the features of our stepmother.

“In my wish to do right, I went wrong with Paul. I know it now, and am sorry. I shall tell him when I see him, and tell him of you. Keep Carl straight. He has fine instincts, but is easily influenced and may be led astray if the temptation comes in pleasant guise. If he falls it will be a woman who lures him on. Keep him as much as possible under your influence and Annie’s. I wish I might see him again, but—” Here her mind began to wander. “It’s getting late. Katy ought to go to bed. Good-night, Katy. I have loved you more than you know.”

She lifted herself up and kissed the bright face bent down to hers, and then lay back upon her pillow as if utterly exhausted.

“Must I go to bed before the sun is down?” Katy whispered to her father, who shook his head and held her closely to him.

It was hours yet before the sun would set, and as they dragged slowly on we watched the dying woman who talked of many things strange to us. Of her first husband and her early home in Maine, and the school-house under the hill with the girls and boys she had known and played with there. They were old men and women now, she said, and their faces were tired and worn as if life had been hard to bear, and she had so much wanted to help them in some way. Then she spoke of Paul and we learned more of him from her ravings than we had known before, and saw more of the motives and principles which had actuated her conduct. Neither were bad, but strict almost to severity. Then she talked of Carl and Katy and father and ourselves, who, she said, did not understand her, but she never mentioned the little baby so soon to be left motherless. He had come into her life so recently and his coming had brought her so low that she seemed to have forgotten him entirely. She grew very quiet at last and fell asleep, while Fan, who always rose to the occasion, took her post at the bedside, bidding the nurse take the rest she needed so much. It was not a long vigil we kept, for as the sun was setting Mrs. Hathern awoke and began to move her hands over the bedclothes as if in quest of something.

“Where is it? Do you know?” she said to Fan, who, divining her meaning, went to the next room where the baby was sleeping in Phyllis’s lap.

Fan had not seen it yet and she scarcely glanced at it now, but she lifted it very carefully in her arms and brought it to its mother.

“Look,” she said. “It’s the baby.”

Very curiously the sick woman looked first at Fan and then at the child, but the mist of death had gathered too thickly on her brain for her to realize the truth. The baby was a puzzle she could not solve.

“Whose is it? Yours?” she asked, putting her hand upon its head.

“No,” Fan answered very gently. “It is your baby,—little Paul. Don’t you remember?”

There was a struggle between reason and delirium, but the soul was drifting away too far for any real consciousness or memory. Only the name of Paul arrested and held it for a moment.

“Little Paul,” she whispered, with a smile. “Yes, he was a pretty boy when I took him; bigger than this one. Whose did you say it is? And who are you?”

Her hand still lay on the baby’s head, but her eyes were closed. She was going fast and Fan knew it, and in an ecstasy of grief and terror held the baby face close to the white lips and said, “Mother, mother, it is your baby. Kiss him once, that I may tell him. It is little Paul.”

She had never before called Mrs. Hathern mother, and now it came from her involuntarily, born of her pity for the dying woman and helpless child. But it produced a wonderful effect. Quickly the eyes unclosed and were illumined with a strange light as they beamed upon Fan.

“You called me mother,” she said, “and it brings things back to me and makes me glad. Thank you, Fanny. Hold the baby nearer while I kiss him for the first and last time. Little Paul, my little Paul.”

She put her arms around the boy, kissed him twice and never spoke again, although she lived until the early dawn of the next day, and then died as peacefully as if going to sleep.

It was I who went with father on the long, sad journey to Mt. Auburn, where the costly monuments and signs of grandeur everywhere were in striking contrast to the simple cemetery on the hillside where she had expressed a wish not to be buried; but when the ceremony of interment was over and we turned away, leaving our dead there alone, I felt that when my time should come I should far rather lie down under the whispering pines, within sight of the lights of home, than be left in that “beautiful city of the dead.” The family monument was tall and grand, and beside the husband’s name was that of “Paul Haverleigh, who died in Lovering, Va., March, 1863, aged 18 years.” I did not know before that it was there, and when I saw it I was conscious of an added feeling of respect and regret for the woman whose real worth I had, perhaps, not fully appreciated.

Carl had met us in Albany, so stunned by the shock of his mother’s death that he scarcely spoke at all, and never asked a question until after the burial and I was alone with him at the Revere, where we stopped, as his mother’s house was rented. I do not think he had shed a tear, but his face was very pale and there were dark circles under his eyes as he sat down by me and said: “Now, Annie, tell me about it. Why did mother die? What was the matter?”

I looked at him in some surprise and asked, “Do you really know nothing?”

“Nothing,” he answered, “except the telegram saying she was dead. I supposed her perfectly well. She wrote to me last week as usual. It must have been terribly sudden.”

“It was sudden,” I said. “It was almost like well to-day and dead to-morrow.”

“But what was it?” he asked, a little impatiently, and I replied, “Carl, don’t you know there is a little baby at The Elms, your brother and mine, who cost your mother her life?”

“A baby? Your brother and mine? It is not true,” he exclaimed, springing to his feet and staring at me as if in some way I were to blame.

“It is true,” I said. “There is a baby at The Elms, born a few hours before your mother died, and Fan is caring for it. That’s why she didn’t come. She held it for your mother to kiss before she died. ‘My little Paul,’ she called it, and those were the last words she ever spoke. ‘My little Paul.’”

Whether it was the memory of the Paul whose grave was under the Virginia pines, or the thought of his dying mother kissing her little boy, or both, I cannot tell; but something unlocked the flood-gates of Carl’s tears, and laying his head on my shoulder he sobbed bitterly, while I tried to comfort him.

“Don’t, Annie,” he said, “don’t speak to me; don’t try to stop me. I must cry. I am so glad to cry. I couldn’t at first for the something that choked me so, when I heard mother was dead.”

He grew calm at last, and began to talk naturally, inquiring after Fan and Katy, and Norah and Phyllis, but saying nothing of the baby. Nor during the few days we stayed in Boston did he ever speak of it of his own accord. He evinced, however, a good deal of interest in, as well as knowledge of, business matters, which were necessarily discussed by my father. By the conditions of the Haverleigh will Carl was now sole heir of his father’s fortune, which was larger than we had supposed. Knowing that he had inherited her love for luxury and expenditure, his mother had purposely kept from him the exact amount of his father’s estate, which, now that he knew it, filled his mind more than the very small amount which little Paul was to have by will from his mother. From the income of her husband’s money Mrs. Hathern had only saved a few thousands, which were hers to do with as she pleased, and these, by a will made a few weeks before her death, she had left equally to my father and their child, should he live; so, while Carl counted his money by hundreds of thousands, little Paul had scarcely three. My father had the same and all the furniture which had been taken to The Elms. I do not think the discrepancy between his fortune and that of his brother occurred to Carl.

The baby was something wholly unexpected and whose existence he could not realize. The money was his father’s, not little Paul’s, and he accepted it as a matter of course, assuming, as it seemed to me, a slight air of importance as the heir to so much wealth. He was very kind to us, and very generous during our stay in Boston, paying all our bills and insisting upon taking us everywhere, or, rather, taking me. Father had no heart to go, but I was young, and the sights of Boston were new and wonderful, and I went wherever Carl took me. Sometimes he spoke of his mother and always with great affection, but he never mentioned Paul until the day we left when he brought me a silver rattle, which he said was for “the little shaver,” who, he presumed, would be a lot of bother to us.

“Indeed, he will not,” I answered, rather hotly, for I was irritated by his indifference. “He is a dear little thing, and so you will think when you come to us in July.”

“I don’t believe I shall come,” he said, hesitatingly, and without looking directly at me.

“Not come!” I repeated. “Oh, Carl, we have anticipated your visit so much that you must not disappoint us. Your mother wanted us to see a great deal of you, and Fan and I will do all we can to make you happy. You said you liked Virginia and us.”

“So I do,” he answered. “I like you immensely, but you see mother’s not being there will make it so sad, and then a lot of the boys are going to camp out in the Adirondacks and want me to go with them. It will not take all summer, though, and, perhaps, I’ll run down for a week or two at the last; so don’t look so gloomy, sister mine. I do love you and Fan and Katy dearly, and I did have a grand time at The Elms; but you see mother is gone, and I like change and new faces,—a new one for every day of the year, if I could have it. Bad in me, I know; but I was born that way, and can’t help it.”

He didn’t seem quite like the Carl of the previous year. He was older,—more mature, more like a young man of twenty-one than a boy of seventeen. But he kissed me very affectionately at parting, and sent his love, with a shell comb, to Fanny, a doll for Katy, a red silk handkerchief for a turban for Phyllis, and a new gown to Norah.

These, with the silver rattle, I brought to our home, which seemed very desolate without the ruling spirit which had kept us at so high pressure that, although we had not at first liked it, we missed it, now it was gone, more than we had thought possible.

“I really don’t know when to go to bed, or get up, or what I ought to do when I am up,” Fan said, with a half sob as we talked matters over the night after my return.

She had dismissed the nurse as too expensive an article to keep. She knew that the money which had been spent so lavishly for us all must cease with Mrs. Hathern’s death, and when I told her what had been left to father, she said, “For his sake I wish it might have been more; he is growing old and his practice is nothing. For ourselves I don’t care. We learned a good many useful lessons from Mrs. Hathern, and I hope we shall not fall back into our old slipshod ways. We have certainly gained something by her coming here,—orderly habits, and our baby.”

There was a world of tenderness in her voice as she said “our baby” and bent over the cradle where he was sleeping. He was so small that I was half afraid to touch him lest he should break in my hands like some brittle toy; but Fan took to him naturally, constituting herself his nurse and exulting over every sign of growing intellect or physical strength as if she had been his mother. What Carl would think of him was a question we often asked ourselves as we counted the weeks he was to spend in the Adirondacks, and then began to look for his coming. But we looked in vain. Following the Adirondacks was an excursion to the White Mountains, which lasted so long that at its close only a few days remained in which to visit us before returning to Andover, and he hardly thought it would pay to take the long journey for so short a time. He wrote to us often long chatty letters full of affection and promises to spend the whole of the next long vacation with us. But the long vacation came and went and was succeeded by another and another, and still Carl did not come.