Uncle Mat made a determined effort to persuade Sylvia to return to New York with him; and though he was not successful, he was not altogether discouraged by her reply.

"I have been thinking of it," she said, "but I promised Mrs. Gray I'd stay here through the winter, and she'd be hurt and disappointed now if I didn't; besides, I don't feel quite ready for New York myself yet. I realize that I've remained—nearly long enough—and as soon as the warm weather comes, I'm going to have my own little house remodelled and put in order, and move there for the summer. It'll be such fun—just like doll's housekeeping! Then in the fall—I wont promise—but perhaps if you still want me, I'll come to you, at least until I decide what to do next."

"Come now for a visit, if you won't for the rest of the winter."

"Not yet; by spring I'm afraid I'll have to have some new clothes—I've had nothing since I came here except a fur coat, which arrived by parcel post! Sally wants to go away in the Easter vacation, and if you can squeeze us both into your little guest-room, perhaps we'll come together then."

"You're determined to have some sort of a bodyguard in the shape of your new friends to protect you from your old ones?"

"Not quite that. I'll come alone if you prefer it," said Sylvia quickly.

"No, no, my dear; I should be glad to have Sally. How about Austin, too? He could sleep on the living-room sofa, you know, and that would make four of us to go about together, which is always a pleasant number. Thomas would be home at that time, and Austin could probably leave more easily than at any other."

"Ask him by all means. I think he would be glad to go."

Austin was accordingly invited, and accepted with enthusiasm. Uncle Mat found him in the barn, where he was separating cream with the new electric separator, but he nodded, with a smile which showed all his white teeth, as his voice could not be heard above the noise of the machine.

"Indeed, I will," he said heartily, when the current was switched off again. "How unfortunate that Easter comes so late this year—but that will give us all the longer to look forward to it in! I hate to have you go back, Mr. Stevens, but I suppose the inevitable call of the siren city is too much for your easily tempted nature!"

Mr. Stevens laughed, and assented. "How that boy has changed!" he said to himself as he walked back to the house. "He fairly radiates enthusiasm and wholesomeness. Well, I'm sorry for him. I wish Sylvia would leave now instead of in the spring, in spite of her promises and scruples and what-not. And I wish, darn it all, that she were as easy to read as he is."

Austin's existence, just at that time, seemed even more rose-colored than Uncle Mat could suspect. The day after Christmas he pondered for a long time on the events of the night before, and gave some very anxious thought to his future line of conduct. At first he decided that it would be best to avoid Sylvia altogether, and thus show her that she had nothing to dread from him, for her sudden fear had been very hard to bear; but before night another and wiser course presented itself to him—the idea of going on exactly as if nothing had happened that was in the least extraordinary, and prove to her that he was to be trusted. Accordingly, assuming a calmness which he was very far from feeling, he stopped at her door again before going upstairs, saying cheerfully:

"Tell me to go away if you want to; if not, I've come for my first
French lesson."

Sylvia looked up with a smile from the book she was reading. "Entrez, monsieur," she said gayly; "avez-vous apportÉ votre livre, votre cahier, et votre plume? Comment va l'oncle de votre ami? Le chat de votre mÈre, est-il noir?"

Austin burst out laughing at her mimicry of the typical conversation in a beginner's grammar, and she joined him. The critical moment had passed. He saw that he was welcome, that he had risen and not fallen in her regard, though he was far from guessing how much, and opening his book, drew another chair near the fire and sat down beside her.

"You must have some romances as well as this dry stuff," she said, when he had pegged away at Chardenal for over an hour. "We'll read Dumas together, beginning with the Valois romances, and going straight along in the proper order. You'll learn a lot of history, as well as considerable French. Some of it is rather indiscreet but—"

"Which of us do you think it is most likely to shock?" he asked, with such an expression of mock-alarm that they both burst out laughing again; and when they had sobered down, "Now may we have some Browning, please?"

So Sylvia reached for a volume from her shelf, and began to read aloud, while Austin smoked; she read extremely well, and she loved it. She went from "The Last Duchess" to "The Statue and the Bust," from "Fra Filippo Lippi" to "Andrea del Sarto." And Austin sat before the fire, smoking and listening, until the little clock again roused them to consciousness by striking twelve.

"This will never do!" he exclaimed, jumping up. "I must have regular hours, like any schoolboy. What do you say to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, from seven-thirty to ten? The other nights I'll bend my energies to preparing my lessons."

"A capital idea. Good-night, Austin."

"Good-night, Sylvia."

There were, however, no more French lessons that week. The next evening twenty young people went off together in sleighs, got their supper at White Water, danced there until midnight, and did not reach home until three in the morning. The following night there was a "show" in Wallacetown, and although they had all declared at their respective breakfast-tables—for breakfast is served anywhere from five-thirty to six-thirty in Hamstead, Vermont—that nothing would keep them out of bed after supper that night, off they all went again. A "ball" followed the "show," and the memory of the first sleigh-ride proved so agreeable that another was undertaken. And finally, on New Year's Eve the Grays themselves gave a party, opening wide the doors of the fine old house for the first time in many years. Sylvia played for the others to dance on this occasion, as she had done at Christmas, but in the rest of the merry-making she naturally could take no part. Austin, however, proved the most enthusiastic reveller of all, put through his work like chain lightning, and was out and off before the plodding Thomas had fairly begun. Manlike, it did not occur to him to give up any of these festivities because Sylvia could not join in them. For years he had hungered and thirsted, as most boys do, for "a good time"—and done so in vain. For years his work had seemed so endless and yet so futile—for what was it all leading to?—that it had been heartlessly and hopelessly done, and when it was finished, it had left him so weary that he had no spirit for anything else much of the time. Now the old order had, indeed, changed, yielding place to new. Good looks, good health, and a good mind he had always possessed, but they had availed him little, as they have many another person, until good courage and high ideals had been added to them. He scarcely saw Sylvia for several days, and did not even realize it, they seemed so full and so delightful; then coming out of the house early one afternoon intending to go to the barn to do some little odd jobs of cleaning up, he met her, coming towards him on snowshoes, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling. She waved her hand and hurried towards him.

"Oh, Austin! Are you awfully busy?"

"No, not at all. Why?"

"I've just been over to my house, for the first time—you know in the fall, I couldn't walk, and then I lost the key, and—well, one thing after another has kept me away—lately the deep snow. But these last few days I got to thinking about it—you've all been gone so much I've been alone, you see—so I decided to try getting there on snowshoes—just think of having a house that's so quiet that there isn't even a road to it any more! It was quite a tramp, but I made it and went in, and, oh! it's so wonderful—so exactly like what I hoped it was going to be—that I hurried back to see if you wouldn't come and see it too, and let me tell you everything I'm planning to do to it?"

She stopped, entirely out of breath. In a flash, Austin realized, first, that she had been lonely and neglected in the midst of the good times that all the others had been having; realized, too, that he had never before seen her so full of vitality and enthusiasm; and then, that, without being even conscious of it, she had come instinctively to him to share her new-found joy, while he had almost forgotten her in his. He was not sufficiently versed in the study of human nature to know that it has always been thus with men and women, since Eve tried to share her apple with Adam and only got blamed for her pains. Austin blamed himself, bitterly and resentfully, and decided afresh that he was the most utterly ungrateful and unworthy of men. His reflections made him slow in answering.

"Don't you want to come?"

"Of course I want to come! I was just thinking—wait a second, I'll get my snowshoes."

"I'm going to tear down a partition," she went on excitedly as they ploughed through the snow together, "and have one big living-room on the left of the front door; on the right of it a big bedroom—I've always pined for a downstairs bedroom—I don't know why, but I never had one till I came to your house—with a bathroom and dressing-room behind it; the dining-room and kitchen will be in the ell. I'm sure I can make that unfinished attic into three more bedrooms, and another bathroom, but I want to see what you think. I'm going to have a great deep piazza all around it, and a flower-garden—and—"

She could hardly wait to get there. Her enthusiasm was contagious. Austin soon found himself making suggestions, helping her in her plans. They went through every nook and corner of the tiny cottage; he had not dreamed that it possessed the possibilities that Sylvia immediately found in it. They stayed a long time, and walked home over fields of snow which the sinking sun was turning rosy in its glowing light. That evening Austin came for his lesson again.

By the second of January, the last of the visitors had gone, and the old Gray place was restored to the order and quiet which had reigned before the holidays began. Mrs. Gray was lonely, but her mind was at ease. She had been watching Austin closely, and it seemed quite clear to her that Uncle Mat was mistaken about him. The idea that her favorite son was going to be made unhappy was quickly dismissed; and in her rejoicing over the first payment on their debt at the bank, and in the new position of importance and consequence which her husband was beginning to occupy in the neighborhood, it was soon completely forgotten. The succeeding months seemed to prove her right; and the all-absorbing interest in the family was Mr. Gray's election to the Presidency of the Cooperative Creamery Association of Hamstead, and his probable chances of being nominated as First Selectman—in place of Silas Jones, recently deceased—at March Town Meeting.