like expanse with trees showing
their graceful branching in exquisite tracery against the clear blue
sky. Beyond lay Paris, its red and gray roofs showing among the bare
trees, with domes, spires, and gilded crosses cresting the irregular
line.

"The view here is beautiful, is it not?" said Miss Drayton.

Mrs. Patterson did not move her eyes from the horizon line. "I was
thinking of home," she said. "How beautiful it is there these February
mornings! Our noble rows of elms and oaks and maples! Up the avenue, the
domes of the Capitol and the Library are shining against the gray or
gold or rosy sky. And there is the monument pointing heavenward. Oh, the
broad streets, the merry, busy throngs of our own people! I should like
to see it all again. Sarah, let us go home. I want--to be there--my last
days."

Miss Drayton's eyes filled with tears, but she kept her voice steady:
"It shall be as you wish, sister. We will go home," she said.

Leaving Pat and Anne at school, they made the home-going voyage, and
Mrs. Patterson spent her last weeks in her beloved homeland.

CHAPTER XII

After her sister's death, Miss Drayton went with a cousin for a quiet
summer in the Adirondacks. Before leaving, she had meant to talk to her
brother-in-law about Anne, to tell him of her sister's wish to keep the
child, and to say that she herself would take charge of the little
orphan. But she was so tired! Life seemed very empty and yet she shrank
from any new responsibility. So day after day passed, and she went away
without saying a word about Anne. After all, it would be time enough,
she thought, when the children were brought back to America.

In his great new loneliness, Mr. Patterson's heart turned more than ever
to his son; and he put aside business engagements and went, by the
swiftest boat and the fastest train, to join Pat in Paris and bring him
home.

Father and son met with a formal but hearty handshake.

"Howdy, dad."

"Hello, son. How's your health?"

The French man-servant, looking on at this greeting, shrugged his
shoulders. "My son and I would have given the kiss and the embrace," he
commented to himself. "But they--how very American!"

'Very American' they both were. Mr. Patterson was a slim, alert business
man, with a firm chin cleft in the middle, mouth hidden by a tawny,
drooping mustache, deep-set gray eyes under a broad brow from which the
brown hair was rapidly receding at the temples. Pat had his fath