room in the attic ready for me, just the same."

"Yes, I know; Aunt Martha never forgot you, Cousin Lorando."

"Well, it's fifteen years since I saw the old place, and a lot's
happened since then, I tell you. First place, I'm a rich man, Cousin
Jule.

"Oh, I don't mean one of these multi-millionaires you have about here,
for I haven't even seven figures opposite my name; but short of that
I did very well for myself out West there, and I earned it all fair,
too--though I was pretty lucky, and that counts.

"Anyhow, never mind about that. Only I've got enough to have anything I
want, and to give my friends something, too. So as soon as I got back.
East I went straight down to the farm. But it was all shut up and a kind
of green hedge where the fence used to be, and I judged it was sold, and
I felt pretty sore about it, so I came right away."

"They only come there in June," Miss Trueman explained, "and they go
back before Thanksgiving."

"Yes. Well, I didn't know that."

He waited again for a few seconds, and Miss Trueman sat in respectful
silence till he should continue.

"You see, I'd been East once before, eight years ago, but I didn't see
the farm then," he said finally.

"I got married while I was West."

His audience of one started slightly.

"She's dead now," he added abruptly.

"Oh, Cousin Lorando--"

"You needn't bother about the sympathy, my dear, for there's none
needed. I hadn't been with her for a good while. I saw her in a
concert-hall out there, and she had curly hair and a kind of taking way
with her, and so I married her. I'd just made a big hit, and she wanted
to come to New York, and we came. We went to a big hotel, and it was
dress-suits for me and diamonds for her, and we drove in a carriage in
the park in the afternoon. She liked it, but I soon got enough. I don't
care much for that sort of thing. She wanted to go to the theatre and
see the girls that she'd been one of, you see, from the other side of
the curtain. And she saw a man there she used to know, and--well, it
turned out she liked him better, that's all."

"Oh, Cousin Lorando, how terrible--for her!"

"Um, yes. She didn't think it was specially terrible, I guess, though.
She just packed up and went."

"Went?"

"Yes--with him, you see. Diamonds and all. I got a divorce, of course.
And she wasn't such a bad lot, after all, for he hadn't any money to
speak of, compared to me. It was the man she wanted. Well, she got him.