of such generous proportions that even when the entire family were
gathered there they could not crowd it. On a wide couch, at one side of
the fireplace, sat his father and mother, talking in low tones
concerning some matter of evident interest, to judge by their intent
faces. Rosamond, like the girl she resembled, sat, girl fashion, on a
pile of cushions close by the fire; and Stephen, her husband, not far
away, by a table with a drop-light, was absorbed in a book. Uncle Rufus
was examining a pile of photographs on the other side of the table. Ted
sprawled on a couch at the far end of the room, deep in a boy's
magazine, a reading light at his elbow. At the opposite end of the room,
where the piano stood, Roberta, music rack before her, was drawing her
bow across nearly noiseless strings, while Ruth picked softly at her
harp: indications of intention to burst forth into musical strains when
a hush should chance to fall upon the company.

Judge Calvin Gray alone was absent from the gathering, and even as
Louis's eyes wandered about the pleasant room, his uncle's figure
appeared in the doorway. As if he were answering his sister Ruth, Judge
Gray spoke his thought.

"I wonder," said he, advancing toward the fireside, "if anywhere in this
wide world there is a happier family life than this!"

Louis sprang up to offer Judge Gray the chair he had been occupying--a
favourite, luxuriously cushioned armchair, with a reading light beside
it ready to be switched on at will, which was Uncle Calvin's special
treasure, of an evening. Louis himself took up his position on the
hearth-rug, opposite Rosamond.

Aunt Ruth answered her brother energetically: "None happier, Calvin,
I'll warrant, and few half as happy. I can't help wishing those two
people Rufus and I've been visiting could look in here just now."

"Why make them envious?" suggested Louis, who loved to hear his Aunt
Ruth's crisp speeches.

"The question is--would they be envious?" This came from Stephen, whose
absorption in his book evidently admitted of penetration from the
outside.

"Why, of course they would!" declared Aunt Ruth. "You should have seen
the way they had me pour the coffee and tea, all the while I was there.
That young man Richard was always getting me to pour something--said he
liked to see me do it. And he was always sending a servant off and doing
things for me himself. If I'd been a young girl he couldn't have hovered
round any more devotedly."