A peep at the family as on the day of his expected arrival from Paris
they sat waiting for him will enlighten us somewhat. Taken as a whole,
it was a very pleasant family group, which sat there waiting for the
foreign lion, waiting for the whistle of the engine which was to herald
his approach.

"I wonder if he has changed," said the mother, glancing at the opposite
mirror and arranging the puffs of glossy false hair which shaded her
aristocratic forehead.

"Of course he has changed somewhat," returned Miss Asenath, rubbing
together her white, bony hands, on one of which a costly diamond was
flashing. "Nearly two years of Paris society must have imparted to him
that _air distingue_ so desirable in a young man who has traveled."

"He'll hardly fail of making a good match now," Miss Eudora remarked,
caressing the pet spaniel which had climbed into her lap. "I think we
must manage to visit Saratoga or some of those places next summer. Mr.
Gardner found his wife at Newport, and they say she's worth half a
million."

"But horridly ugly," and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she
had been indulging. "Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a
fish. John would never be happy with such a wife."

"Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about
whom he wrote us just before going to Europe," Miss Eudora said
spitefully, pinching the long silken ears of her pet until the animal
yelled with pain.

There was a faint sigh from the direction of Anna's chair, and all knew
she was thinking of the missionary. The mother continued:

"I trust he is over that fancy, and ready to thank me for the strong
letter I wrote him."

"Yes, but the girl," and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand.
"None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don't you
remember he wrote how much she loved him--how gentle and confiding her
nature was, and how to leave her then might prove her ruin?"

"Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing
girls," Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined:

"I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a schoolgirl."

"But it is most likely he did that to mislead us," said the mother. "The
only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie
was. If he were not her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie
as a daughter," was the next remark, whereupon there ensued a
conversation touching th