Ben is stout and comfortable-looking, and the same grave, affectionate
fellow. The children seem to come up without much sickness or trouble.
When Mother Underhill feels disposed to cavil and criticise, for she
_is_ shocked by the new woman's heresies, she recalls the "last
good-night kiss," and is silent. What if there had been no one at hand
to bring it home?

Delia's girls grow up into "modern women." It is true they do not spend
half a day a week darning stockings, neither have they learned to put
the exquisite over and under darns in tablecloths that the little girl
could do by the time she was ten. But they sing and play; they are ready
speech-makers, and clubs are glad to get them. They know about Greek
antiquities and Central American wonders; they can take up the questions
of the day intelligently; one paints really very well, and has entered
pictures at the Academy. One is interested in industrial schools for
girls, and the doctor, who is "Daisy Jasper," a tall, bright,
good-looking woman, has a big, tender heart for all babies who are
suffering, and trains many a poor mother how to care judiciously for her
offspring.

But all the nieces think Aunt Nan just the loveliest and sweetest body
in the world. They send her flowers and bric-a-brac; they beg her to
come here and there to receptions and charity bazaars, and reunions of
all sorts. She is so small and dainty, and they are all growing up to
the new stature.

George has come home at last, after varying fortunes. He has seen San
Francisco built and destroyed by fire, and rebuilt, and at last planned
into a handsome city. He has mined and been in the wild life known only
to the few remaining "forty-niners." He has gained and lost, been burned
out and robbed, been one of the heads of a Vigilance Committee, and
mayor of a town; and at last, when all is serene and prosperous, a great
wave of homesickness overtakes him.

It is twenty years since he went away, though he has been home once in
the time. He is spare, and has a weather-beaten look, and is old for his
years. Is the money worth all the sacrifice?

He will build a house on their part of the old farm at Yonkers, where
his heart has turned in many a weary hour; but Uncle Faid and Aunt Crete
are dead. Barton Finch and Retty are living in town, and Barton is a
thriving manufacturer. Yonkers has stretched out; and the suburbs are in
that ugly transition state of new unworked streets and dingy cottages,