ce little letter!" she said; "he must be clever, like
you. I'll buy some books for him."

That was in January. By April Johnny and his books and his
multiplication table and his freckles were almost constantly in her
mind. It was about the middle of April that she said to her husband:

"If you haven't a tenant, I suppose we might open father's house for a
month? Perhaps being there would be better than--giving presents? If I
saw him just once I shouldn't want to give him things."

"I'm afraid you'd want to more than ever," he demurred, which, of
course, made her protest:

"Oh no, I shouldn't! Do let's do it!"

"Well," he conceded, in triumphant reluctance--for it was what he had
wanted her to say--"if you insist. But I don't believe you'll like it."

So that was how it happened that the weatherworn "For Sale or To Let"
sign was taken down, and the rusty iron gates were opened, and the weedy
graveled driveway made clean and tidy as it used to be in Johnny's
grandfather's time. Johnny himself was immensely interested in all that
went on in the way of renovation, and in the beautiful horses that came
down before Mr. and Mrs. Robertson arrived.

"Aunty, they must be pretty rich," he said.

"They are," said Miss Lydia.

"I guess if they had a boy they'd give him a pony," Johnny said,
sighing.

"Very likely," Miss Lydia told him. And she, too, watched the opening up
of the big house with her frightened blue eyes.

"Lydia, you're losing flesh," Mrs. Barkley said in an anxious bass.
Indeed, all Old Chester was anxious about Miss Sampson's looks that
summer. "What _is_ the matter?" said Old Chester.

But Miss Lydia, although she really did grow thin, never said what was
the matter.

"I do dislike secretiveness!" said Mrs. Drayton; "I call it vulgar."

"I wonder what she calls curiosity?" Doctor Lavendar said when this
remark was repeated to him.

Miss Lydia may have been vulgar, but her vulgarity did not save her from
terror. When Mary drove past the little house, the Grasshopper's heart
was in her mouth! Would Johnny's mother stop?--or would Mrs. Robertson
go by? There came, of course, the inevitable day when the mother
stopped. . . . It was in June, a day of white clouds racing in a blue
sky, and tree tops bending and swaying and locust blossoms showering on
the grass. Johnny was engaged in trying to lure his cat out of a pear
tree, into which a dog had chased her.

"Stop!" Mary Robertson called to the coac