e from home.

"I am so glad I saw him--so glad I sent the ring, for now they will know
I am the same Katy Lennox, and I think Helen sometimes feared I might
get proud with you," she said, while Wilford pulled her rich fur around
her, smiling to see how bright and pretty she was looking since that
meeting with Dr. Grant. "It was better than medicine," Katy said, when
beyond Springfield he referred to it a second time, and leaning her head
upon his shoulder she fell into a refreshing sleep, from which she did
not waken until New York was reached, and Wilford, lifting her gently
up, whispered to her: "Come, darling, we are home at last."

CHAPTER XIII.

KATY'S FIRST EVENING IN NEW YORK.

The elder Cameron was really better, and more than once he had regretted
recalling his son, who he knew had contemplated a longer stay abroad.
But that could not now be helped; Wilford had arrived in Boston, as
his telegram of yesterday announced--he would be at home to-day; and
No ---- Fifth Avenue was all the morning and a portion of the afternoon
the scene of unusual excitement, for both Mrs. Cameron and her daughters
wished to give the six months' wife a good impression of her new home.
At first they thought of inviting company to dinner, but to this the
father objected. "Katy should not be troubled the first day," he said;
"it was bad enough for her to meet them all; they could ask Mark if they
chose, but no one else."

And so only Mark Ray was invited to the dinner, gotten up as elaborately
as if a princess had been expected instead of little Katy, trembling in
every joint, when, about four P.M., Wilford awoke her at the depot and
whispered: "Come, darling, we are home at last."

"Why do you shiver so?" he asked, wrapping her cloak around her, and
almost lifting her from the car.

"I don't--know. I guess--I'm cold," and Katy drew a long breath as she
thought of Silverton and the farmhouse, wishing so much that she was
going into its low-walled kitchen, where the cook-stove was, and where
the chairs were all splint-bottomed, instead of into the handsome
carriage, where the cushions were so soft and yielding, and the whole
effect so grand.

She knew it was the Cameron carriage, for Wilford had said it would meet
them; but she had not expected it to be just what it was, and she bowed
humbly to the polite coachman greeting Wilford and herself so
respectfully. "What would our folks say?" she kept repeating to herself
as