eccentric length and bold dark eyes smiling straight
out of the picture as if he were just about to speak to the Arethusa
who worshipped it. He wore a Byronic sort of collar, with a wide tie,
and his shoulders were draped in an Italian military cape, effectively
thrown back from the one wide frog that clasped it just below the
flowing ends of the tie. So he was not like other fathers; not at all
like those most commonplace male parents with which Arethusa was
acquainted. He was far more like the Hero in one of those sentimental
novels she never tired of reading. She could but give him all the most
desirable of the attributes of the men-folk who lived in those pages;
for they seemed so far superior to any man she knew in the flesh.

Miss Asenath, with her stories of him, had helped unconsciously in the
creation of this ideal. Miss Asenath had loved him very dearly,--loved
his bright youth as she did all youth. Miss Eliza's bark was always
much worse than her bite, and she, although she spoke very slightingly
of him at times, had been quite fond of him. So, too, had Miss Letitia.
The little daughter had grown up in an atmosphere that fostered her
hero-worship.

Arethusa's most carefully cherished Dream, through childhood to the
very present time, had been that some day this wonderful father of hers
would come home, here to the Farm. She had planned their meeting, to
the smallest detail, many and many a time. And he had written that he
was coming, over and over again; only to add a little later that "he
would not be able to get across this year." But these repeated
disappointments had in no wise chilled the glow of his daughter's
anticipation.

And now ... he was actually on this side of the Atlantic! No longer
the broad ocean rolled between them. If he had not come clear back
to the Farm, he had come much nearer to it than he had ever been In
Arethusa's recollection of him; and, moreover, he had come with a
_wife_!

Small wonder that Arethusa was excited!

But the Letter.... The Letter would tell her all about it.

"My dear Miss Eliza," it ran--

"I may as well come to the point at once--you always liked that
best, as I recall--and tell you that I am married; was married in
Italy, at the American Consulate at Florence, the second of last
June. My wife is the very finest woman God ever made, bar none;
save perhaps you ladies to whom I write. And I, who was ever for
peace, will fight to