ered herself a little and met the boy's
wondering eyes.

'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said, afraid of
losing his half-dollar.

'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she asked,
questioningly, and a little less sharply.

'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em not to
come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as
easily that way as any other.

But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she
could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his
pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on
time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically:

'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom's. You are
about his size.'

'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want Tom's,' was
Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before
he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.

The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame
of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason
to expect him, her husband came home.

'Well, Dolly,' he said, the moment they were alone, 'this is awfully
unlucky, the whole business. If Arthur must come home, why couldn't he
have written in advance, and not take us by surprise? Looks as if he
meant to spring a trap on us, don't it? And if he did, by Jove, he has
caught us nicely. It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard
the sound of music and dancing, only I don't suppose Arthur has spent
his substance in riotous living, with not over nice people; but there is
no telling what he has been up to all these years that he has not
written to us. Perhaps he is married. He said in his telegram, "Send to
meet _us_." What does that mean, if not a wife?'

'A wife! Oh, Frank!' and with a great gasp Dolly sank down upon the
lounge near where she was standing, and actually went into the hysterics
her husband had prophesied.

In reading the telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable
'_us_,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a
wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park.
It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they
knew nothing positively, except that Arthur was coming home and somebody
was coming with him; it might be a friend, or, what was more likely,