Won't that be
romantic? It almost makes me feel like getting married myself."

"What a way to talk," rebuked Felicity, "and you only fifteen."

"Lots of people have been married at fifteen," laughed the Story Girl.
"Lady Jane Gray was."

"But you are always saying that Valeria H. Montague's stories are silly
and not true to life, so that is no argument," retorted Felicity, who
knew more about cooking than about history, and evidently imagined that
the Lady Jane Gray was one of Valeria's titled heroines.

The wedding was a perennial source of conversation among us in those
days; but presently its interest palled for a time in the light of
another quite tremendous happening. One Saturday night Peter's mother
called to take him home with her for Sunday. She had been working at Mr.
James Frewen's, and Mr. Frewen was driving her home. We had never seen
Peter's mother before, and we looked at her with discreet curiosity. She
was a plump, black-eyed little woman, neat as a pin, but with a rather
tired and care-worn face that looked as if it should have been rosy and
jolly. Life had been a hard battle for her, and I rather think that her
curly-headed little lad was all that had kept heart and spirit in her.
Peter went home with her and returned Sunday evening. We were in the
orchard sitting around the Pulpit Stone, where we had, according to the
custom of the households of King, been learning our golden texts and
memory verses for the next Sunday School lesson. Paddy, grown sleek and
handsome again, was sitting on the stone itself, washing his jowls.

Peter joined us with a very queer expression on his face. He seemed
bursting with some news which he wanted to tell and yet hardly liked to.

"Why are you looking so mysterious, Peter?" demanded the Story Girl.

"What do you think has happened?" asked Peter solemnly.

"What has?"

"My father has come home," answered Peter.

The announcement produced all the sensation he could have wished. We
crowded around him in excitement.

"Peter! When did he come back?"

"Saturday night. He was there when ma and I got home. It give her an
awful turn. I didn't know him at first, of course."

"Peter Craig, I believe you are glad your father has come back," cried
the Story Girl.

"'Course I'm glad," retorted Peter.

"And after you saying you didn't want ever to see him again," said
Felicity.

"You just wait. You haven't heard my story yet. I wouldn't have been
glad to see fath