. "He's Mammy Malaprop's grandson. He thinks he's the real
Gabriel and it's his duty to blow. He sings like an angel, but can't
learn to spell his name. There they are!" She waved her hand gaily
to the group on the porch.

As he saw them Laine thought of Claudia's arrival in New York, and
his face flushed. The men came down the steps, and a moment later he
was presented to Claudia's mother, gracious, gentle, and of a dignity
fine and sweet; to her sister, home for the holidays with her husband
and children; to an engineer cousin from the West, and a girl from
Philadelphia; and once more his hands were shaken by Colonel Bushrod
Ball. It was a Christmas guest who was being welcomed, not Winthrop
Laine alone, and he wondered if he were indeed himself.

More than once he wondered before the day was done. Under the
leadership of the Colonel the men were shown their rooms, by way of
the dining-room, for, like Moses, Uncle Bushrod believed inward cheer
essential after outdoor chill; and, moreover, the apple toddy must be
tested. It was an old world he was in, but to him a very new one.
The happy stir of Christmas preparations, the coming and going of
friends and neighbors, the informality and absence of pretense, the
gay chatter and genuine interest, was warm and sweet; and as one who
watches a play he wondered at it, and something long thought dead
thrilled and throbbed and stirred within him.

In former days the house had doubtless been the scene of lavish
living, he thought from time to time, and he would have liked to
explore the many rooms with their polished floors and deep
window-seats, their carved paneling and marble mantels; and when, in
the afternoon, he found himself alone for a few minutes in the vast
hall, he paced off its sixty feet of length and its twenty of width
to know their number, studied the winding staircase with its white
pilasters and mahogany rails, scanned hurriedly the portraits in
their tarnished frames, some with the signatures of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, some with Stuart, and others of lesser fame, which hung
above the wainscoted walls; and as he looked he did not wonder at
Claudia's love for her home.

"You care for these things, too, do you?"

The voice behind made him turn quickly. The girl from Philadelphia
nodded to him and hugged her crossed arms closely to her bosom. "I
don't. That is, not in weather like this, I don't. Ancestral halls
sound well, but, unheated, they're hor