om telling me a thing all
the way from New York, so that we could hear it together."

Lydia protested. "Tell you! After those monstrous great letters I've
written! There's nothing you don't know. There's nothing much to tell,
anyhow. I've been museumed and picture-galleried, and churched, and
cultured generally, till I'm full--up to there!" She drew her hand
across her slim white throat and added cheerfully, "But I forgot the
most of that the last three months in Paris. Nearly every girl in the
party was going home to come out in society, and of course we just
concentrated on clothes. You don't mind, do you?"

As she hesitated, with raised eyebrows of doubt, her mother, heedless of
what she was saying, was suddenly overcome by her appealing look and
drew her close with a rush of little incoherent tender cries choked with
tears. It was as though she were seeing her for the first time. Judge
Emery twice tried to speak before his husky voice was under control. He
patted his wife on the shoulder. "There, there, Mother," he said
vaguely. To Lydia he went on, "You've been gone quite a while, you know,
and--well, till you have a baby-girl of your own I guess you won't have
much notion of how we feel."

Lydia's dark eyes filled, responsive to the emotion about her. "I'm just
about distracted," she cried. "I love everybody and everything so, I
can't stand it! I want to kiss you both and I can't make up my mind
which to kiss first--and it's that way about everything! It's all so
good I don't know what to begin on." She brought their faces together
and achieved a simultaneous kiss with a shaky laugh. "Now, look here! If
we stand here another minute we'll all cry. Come and show me the house.
I want to see every single thing. All the old things, and all the new
ones Mother's been writing about." She seized their hands and pulled
them into the parlor. "I've been in this room already, but I didn't see
it. I don't believe I even touched the floor when I walked, I was so
excited. Oh, it's lovely--it's lovely!"

She darted about the room like a humming-bird, recognizing what was
familiar with fond little exclamations. "Oh, that darling little wicker
chair!--the picture of the dog!--oh! oh! here's my china lamb!" and
crying out in admiration over new acquisitions.

"Oh, Mother, what a perfectly lovely couch--sofa--what do you call it?
Why, it is so beautifully _different_! Wherever did you get that?"

Mrs. Emery turned to her husban