tolerant amusement of the
assembly. "I guess you haven't lived in the country much, or you
wouldn't talk so. And primroses don't grow in fields here, anyway.
If you could see my hyacinths and crocuses in round beds at home, you
wouldn't mention those poor little stalks in the pots."

Mrs. Ranger laughed, and directed her searching, level glance at
the older woman, who combined in her comely, undisguised middle age
something at once more matronly and more childish than the analytic
authoress could ever find in her own mirror.

"Aha!" she cried, "then you are no friend of dear old Horace, after all,
Miss Trueman! He and I, you see--"

The relation of these two urbanites was revealed no further, for a
bustle in the little hall drew attention to a newcomer unknown not
only to the guests but evidently to the hostesses, who rose, smiling
uncertainly, as a portly, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair made
his way through the group about the samovar.

"I'll have to introduce myself, I see," he began, not precisely
with what an exigent society calls ease of manner, but with a certain
practical self-possession quite as effective.

"I didn't expect the girls to remember me, but I thought perhaps you
might, Julia."

Miss Trueman peered out from the shaded five-o'clock gloom so dear to
Carolyn's soul.

"I don't seem--it's not--why, Cousin Lorando Bean, it's not you?"

"That's it," he said heartily, "that's just exactly it. And he's mighty
glad to see some of his relations again, I can tell you. And these are
Carrie and Lizzie, I suppose. Well, well, fifteen years is a long time,
even to an old fellow like me, and you girls were just beginning to be
young ladies when I left Connecticut. How are you all?"

If this simple greeting came like a breath of her native air to Miss
True-man, it cannot be said to have had a similar effect on her nieces.
Courtesy prevented a full expression of their feelings, but they
affected no undue delight at the presence of their new-found
relative--whom they had very sincerely forgotten, along with many other
details of a somewhat inartistic youth--and turned to their other guests
with a frank relief when they had established him, with a cup of tea, a
sandwich, and Aunt Julia, in the near-by dining-room.

"A third or fourth cousin, I believe, who has lived a long time in the
West," they explained. The company, some of whom doubtless possessed
third or fourth cousins from the West, nodded