een but a child
when he left home, had never before received a letter from him. He wrote
from a fruit farm in Oregon, the description of which, on the
grandiloquent letter-head, gave an impression of ampleness and
prosperity which was not contradicted by the full-blooded satisfaction
in life which breathed from every line of the breezy, good-natured
letter.

The incident stirred Lydia's imagination. It spoke of a wider
horizon--of a fresher air than that about her. She tried to remember the
loud-talking, much-laughing, easy-going young man as she had seen him
last. They were too far apart in years to have had much companionship,
but there had been between them an unspoken affection which had never
died. People always said that George and Marietta were alike and Lydia
and Harry. To this Mrs. Emery always protested that Lydia wasn't in the
_least_ like Henry, and she didn't know what people were talking about;
but the remark gave a secret pleasure to Lydia. She, too, was very fond
of laughing, and her brother's vein of light-hearted nonsense had been a
great delight to her. It was not present in any of the rest of the
family, and certainly did not show itself in her at this period of her
life.

During this time Paul's attention was concentrated on bringing about a
reallotment of American Electric territory in the Middle West, an
arrangement that would add several busy cities to his district and make
a decided difference in his salary and commissions. He worked early and
late in the Endbury office, and made many trips into all parts of the
field, to gather data conclusive of the value of his scheme. Lydia had
tried hard to get from him information enough to understand what it was
all about, but he put her off with vague, fatigued assurances that it
was too complicated for her to grasp, or for him to go over without his
papers; that it would take him too long to explain, and that, anyhow,
she could be sure of one thing--it was all straight, clean business,
designed entirely to give the public better service and more work from
everybody all 'round. Lydia did not doubt this. It was always a great
source of satisfaction to her to feel secure and unshaken trust in her
father's and her husband's business integrity, and she was sorry for
Marietta, who could not, she feared, count among her spiritual
possessions any such faith in Ralph. It was, on the other hand, one of
her most unresigned regrets, that she was not allowed to sh