meet her.

"Little ma," he exclaimed. "Didn't expect me back so soon, did you?"

"So soon," she said, her arms around his neck. Then she held him so,
quite still for a few moments. "You're getting to be a big man," she
said when she released him.

He went into the old sitting room and looked around. It was all quite
the same--no change. There were the same books, the same table, the same
chairs, the same pulley lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling. In
the parlor there was nothing new, nor in the bed rooms or the kitchen.
His mother looked a little older--his father not. Sylvia had changed
greatly--being slightly "peaked" in the face compared to her former
plumpness; it was due to motherhood, he thought. Myrtle seemed a little
more calm and happy. She had a real "steady" now, Frank Bangs, the
superintendent of the local furniture factory. He was quite young,
good-looking, going to be well-off some day, so they thought. "Old
Bill," one of the big horses, had been sold. Rover, one of the two
collies, was dead. Jake the cat had been killed in a night brawl
somewhere.

Somehow, as Eugene stood in the kitchen watching his mother fry a big
steak and make biscuits and gravy in honor of his coming, he felt that
he did not belong to this world any more. It was smaller, narrower than
he had ever thought. The town had seemed smaller as he had come through
its streets, the houses too; and yet it was nice. The yards were sweet
and simple, but countrified. His father, running a sewing machine
business, seemed tremendously limited. He had a country or small town
mind. It struck Eugene as curious now, that they had never had a piano.
And Myrtle liked music, too. As for himself, he had learned that he was
passionately fond of it. There were organ recitals in the Central Music
Hall, of Chicago, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, and he had managed
to attend some after his work. There were great preachers like Prof.
Swing and the Rev. H. W. Thomas and the Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus and Prof.
Saltus, liberal thinkers all, whose public services in the city were
always accompanied by lovely music. Eugene had found all these men and
their services in his search for life and to avoid being lonely. Now
they had taught him that his old world was no world at all. It was a
small town. He would never come to this any more.

After a sound night's rest in his old room he went down the next day to
see Mr. Caleb Williams at the _Appeal_ office, a