rtin, rearranging some reference books for his own convenience in
the little room that is an annex to father's library, wore his skull cap
and Chinese silk dressing gown, which gave him an antique air quite at
variance with his clear skin and eyes.

Lavinia Dorman had been due all the week, but worry with the workmen who
are building in the rear of her house detained her, and she telegraphed
me that she would take the morning express, and asked me to meet her over
in town. So I drove in myself, dropping father at the hospital on the
way, but on reaching the station the train brought me no passenger.

I returned home, hoping to be in time for our way train, thinking I had
mistaken her message, and missed it; but the postmistress,--for every
strange face is noticed in town,--told me that the lady who visited me
two weeks ago walked up from the ten o'clock train; that she had a new
bonnet and "moved right spry," and asked if she was a relative of mine.
"An aunt, maybe, and was the pleasant new gentleman an uncle, and did he
write a newspaper? She thought maybe he did because he was so particular
about his mail." I said something about their being adopted relations,
and hurried home.

The boys were industriously digging dandelions on the side lawn. I
inconsistently let the dear, cheery flowers grow and bloom their fill in
the early season, when they lie close to the sward, but when they begin
to stretch awkward, rubbery necks, and gape about as if to see where they
might best shake out their seed puffs, they must be routed. Do it as
thoroughly as possible, enough always remain to repay my cruelty with a
shower of golden coin the next spring. Bertel spends all his spare time
on the other bits of grass, but the side lawn is the boys' plunder,
where, by patiently working each day at grubbing out the roots at
twenty-five cents a hundred, they expect, before the dandelion season is
over, to amass wealth enough to buy an alluring red goat harness trimmed
with bells that is on exhibition at the harness shop in town, for Corney
Delaney. Yes, they said, Aunt Lavinia had just come, but she said they
need not stop, for she could go in by herself.

There was no one in the hall, sitting room, den, or upstairs, neither had
Effie seen any person enter. Thinking I heard voices in the direction of
father's office, I went there and through to the library "annex," where
an unexpected picture met my gaze. Martin Cortright, the precise, in
s