iform--a slim, fair, boyish person with a
light springy walk. It never could be Cary!

"Oh, Uncle Win, quick!" as the step sounded on the porch. "It
is--someone----" She was so little certain she could not utter a name.

Uncle Winthrop went out, opened the door, and his son put his arms about
the father's neck. If there had been need of words neither could have
uttered them for many minutes.

When Miss Recompense cleaned house a week or two before the piano had
been moved into the parlor. The door stood open so that it could have
the warmth of the hall fire. The two entered it when they had found
their voices.

"It _is_ Cary," thought Doris with a sense of disappointment, though why
she could not have told.

Half an hour afterward they came out to the study.

"Oh, Doris!" Cary cried, "how you have changed and grown. I shouldn't
have known you! I've been carrying about with me the remembrance of a
little girl. In my mind you have been no taller, no older, and yet I
might have known--why, we shall have to get acquainted all over again."

Doris blushed. "I am sure I have not changed as much as you. I did not
think it could be you."

"Someone at Annapolis before we went out designated me as 'That
consumptive-looking young fellow.' But I have grown strong and hearty,
and no doubt I shall come to fourscore. I do not mean that it shall be
all labor and sorrow, either."

Then Cary made the rounds of the house. Miss Recompense was as much
amazed as Doris had been. Cato and Dinah were overjoyed. He had hardly
dared dream that nothing would be changed, that more than the old love
would be given back. He had gone away a boy, nurtured in the restraints
of wise Puritanism that made a lasting mark on New England character; he
had come home a man of experience, of deeper thought, of higher
understanding and stronger affection. He was proud that he had done his
duty as a citizen of the republic, but he knew now that neither naval or
military life was to his taste. Henceforth he was to be a son in the old
home.

Doris left them talking when she went to bed, a little hurt and jealous
that she was no longer first, that she could not be all to Uncle Win. It
gave her a kind of solitary feeling.

The old house took on an aspect of intense interest. There was a
continual going and coming and enough congratulations for a wedding
feast. All Cary's friends vied with each other in warm welcomes, and
Madam Royall claimed him with the