ope you and John will be pleased with your rooms. If they are not
just what you wish, satisfy yourselves; the house is large enough. Mary,
you know the house is yours. I have been after John for ten years to
marry and give me a chance to shift the responsibility of housekeeper to
younger shoulders."

"You know they say comparisons are odious. I am sure if you were to
force me to assume instant charge, John would never believe I could make
a good housekeeper. Were the house inartistic or disordered, I might be
tempted to do so, but everything is so harmonious, so comfortable, so
home-like, that I must serve a long apprenticeship before you should
force the responsibility upon me. You know I have been a teacher; I must
be gradually taught housekeeping, and in the meantime am to be your
daughter as John is your boy."

"Mother, when did you have all this done?"

"The day after I received your telegram I sent to Louisville and had Mr.
Strassel come up; he, Mrs. Neal and I redecorated and refurnished these
rooms for Mary."

"You have been very thoughtful. John, your mother has not given up her
rooms for us, has she? If so, we must refuse to take them."

"No, one of them was mine; the other was a spare bedroom."

"Please come to this window. What a happy view, the garden, the river,
the valley, the fields of grain and the distant, blue mountains! John, I
love your mother and my home most as much as I do you!"

The neighbors and friends of the Cornwalls were very kind to Mary. She
grew to be very fond of Mrs. Neal and Mrs. Duffield. Duffield, several
years before, had married Helen Creech.

Mary was just beginning to feel thoroughly at home, and under Mrs.
Cornwall's tutelage and diplomacy unconsciously assuming charge as
mistress of the house, which was not so hard, as she had an efficient
maid and had always helped her mother, when Dorothy and Bradford came on
from Pittsburgh. Ever since their marriage they had spent the month of
August with Mrs. Neal.

After their arrival they, with John and Mary, began wandering about the
hills and playing the part of lovers as they had done years before,
though the Bradfords were somewhat hampered in their rambles by a little
son whom they had christened John Durrett Bradford.

Rosamond, who knew that the Bradfords were visiting Mrs. Neal,
telegraphed Mary that she and her husband were coming to make her a
visit, leaving home on the 12th of August; they would remain ten days.
S