"Why can't you be
ready at nine in place of ten, let me call for you at that time and
drive over to Restview with me to meet Jack?"

"Is that his name?" she asked in blissfully reassuring tones. "You've
never spoken of him as anybody but your 'kid brother.' Why of course
I'll drive over to Restview with you. I shall be delighted to meet
him."

Privately she had her own fears of what Jack Turner might turn out to
be like. Sam was always so good in speaking of him, always held him in
such tender regard, such profound admiration, that she feared he might
prove to be perfect only in Sam's eyes.

"Good," said Sam. "Just for that I'm going to bring you over some
choice blooms that I have been having the gardener save back for me,"
and he turned away from the telephone quite happy in the thought that
for once he had been able to kill two birds with one stone without
ruffling the feathers of either.

Armed with a huge consignment of brilliant blossoms, enough to
transform her room into a fairy bower, he sped quite happily to Hollis
Creek.

"Oh, gladiolas!" cried Miss Josephine, as he drove up. "How did you
ever guess it! That little bird must have been busy again."

"Honestly, it was the little bird this time. I just had an intuition
that you must like them because I do so well," upon which naive
statement Miss Josephine merely smiled, and calling her father with
pretty peremptoriness, she loaded that heavy gentleman down with the
flowers and with instructions concerning them, and then stepped
brightly into the tonneau with Sam.

It was a pleasant ride they had to Restview, and it was a pleasant
surprise which greeted Miss Josephine when the train arrived, for out
of it stepped a youth who was unmistakably a Turner. He was as tall as
Sam, but slighter, and as clean a looking boy as one would find in a
day's journey. There was that, too, in the hand-clasp between the
brothers which proclaimed at once their flawless relationship.

Miss Stevens was so relieved to find the younger Turner so presentable
that she took him into her friendship at once. He was that kind of
chap anyhow, and in the very first greeting she almost found herself
calling him Jack. Just behind him, however, was a little, dried-up man
with a complexion the color of old parchment, with sandy, stubby hair
shot with gray, and a stubby gray beard shot with red. His lips were a
wide straight line, as grim as judgment day. He walked with a s