"Come sit beside me, Wink, and have a little talk," Mrs. Morrison suggested when they were alone.

Frances came and nestled down beside her mother; the day had been so full of excitement she found it hard work to keep still.

"You know, dear, that Aunt Frances and father have not seen each other for years,--not since before you were born,--and of course they have a great deal to say to each other. There was some trouble--a misunderstanding--but now it is over--"

"They have found the bridge like Gladys and me," Frances put in.

"Yes; but what I was going to say is this: we mustn't be selfish. We must let Aunt Frances have father to herself sometimes. Don't you think so?"

As they sat quietly there in the twilight Mrs. Morrison saw opening before her a path she would not have chosen. She was a person of simple tastes and wide sympathies, and the world of wealth and convention to which her husband would return so naturally had few attractions for her.

She would have need of love and courage, she told herself.

"What do you think, Kate; auntie wants me to take you to New York with me and leave Frances with her!" said Mr. Morrison, coming in.

"She has never been away from me in her life. What do you say, Wink?"

and her mother lifted the face that rested against her shoulder and kissed it.

"I don't know; I believe I'd like it, for then I could see the little girl every day," was the reply.

"I think her great-grandmother has cut out all the rest of her relations," her father remarked, laughing.

"I don't see how she _could_ be my great-grandmother," Frances said meditatively.

Mrs. Richards remembered the candlesticks next day, and they gave her an excuse for an early visit to Mr. Clark. She felt in love and charity with all men, and, finding the optician at leisure, she entered into conversation with him in her most gracious manner. His old-fashioned courtliness pleased her, and she recalled him as one of the proprietors of the large jewellery store of Mason and Clark, years ago.

Mr. Clark remembered her father, Judge Morrison, and all together she spent an exceedingly pleasant hour looking over his valuables and talking of old times. She purchased the candlesticks, and also the two pieces of Wedgwood which exactly matched some her grandfather had brought from England.

"You have shown me all you care to sell?" she asked, rising.

"I believe there is nothing else, madam, except the house. I should like very much to sell it," was Mr. Clark's reply.

When Zen.o.bia ushered her into the sitting room upstairs some minutes later, Mrs. Richards was struck with its cosey beauty. Truly, there were ways of living--pleasant ways--of which she had not dreamed.

Frances was washing the sword fern while she recited her history lesson to her mother, who was sewing.

"I have come to take you home with me to lunch; I can't do without you," Mrs. Richards announced.

"Why don't you stay with us--auntie?" Frances spoke the new t.i.tle hesitatingly.

"That will be much the better plan, and it will please Jack," added Mrs.

Morrison, cordially, and Mrs. Richards stayed.

The next time she and her nephew were alone together she said to him: "Jack, there is something I want you to explain to Katherine. I do not think I could make any difference in my manner of living at my age, even if I wished to, and I do not; but I am beginning to see that there may be a charm about--other ways."

"Yes, auntie," as she paused, "the years I have spent knocking about without any money, having to work hard for Kate and the baby, have been the happiest and best of my life. There was only one drawback to it all--" he laid his hand on hers.

She smiled fondly at him. "I want you to say to Katherine that I know I must seem narrow to her; I realize that she may perhaps fear my influence upon Frances--" her nephew began a protest, but she silenced him. "No, let me finish. I have come to see things differently; I want you to live your own lives in your own way; I want Frances to go on as she has begun--sweet, generous, unconscious, and I only ask to be near you."

When Mr. Morrison repeated this to his wife, tears rose to her eyes. "I haven't been fair to her," she said. "I have been afraid, but I shall not be any more. I shall love her dearly."

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

CAROLINE'S STORY.

"Well, I suppose you have heard the news?"

Caroline's pleasant face was more beaming than usual as Emma ushered her into the room where Mrs. Bond sat with her sewing, the General being safe in dreamland.

"No, I haven't heard any so far as I remember," was her reply.

Emma gave the visitor a chair, and retreated with her books to a corner behind her mother, in the hope that she might not be sent away. She knew something had happened.

"Then you don't know that Mr. Morrison has turned out to be our Mr.

Jack, Miss Frances' nephew?"

"Who is her nephew, did you say?" asked Mrs. Bond, going on with her work.

"Mr. Morrison, to be sure, the father of little Frances, bless her!"

"He is Mrs. Marvin's nephew?"

"Yes," said Caroline, laughing; "only she isn't Mrs. Marvin at all, but Mrs. Richards. It is as good as a play."

Mrs. Bond actually dropped her hands in her lap, as she asked, "Do you mean there isn't any such person as Mrs. Marvin?"

"Of course there is a Mrs. Marvin. She was staying at our house while Miss Frances was abroad,--she is her cousin,--and the first sewing you did was for her. I did not think of explaining, so you went on supposing it was all for Mrs. Marvin. Then when Miss Frances found out that Frances thought she was Mrs. Marvin, she asked me not to tell you any different. I couldn't understand why, then."

"Why should she care who I thought she was?" Mrs. Bond asked, taking up her sewing.

"It is plain enough now. You see, she and Mr. Jack had had a quarrel years ago, and she had not seen or heard of him since; then one day, you know, Frances came to our house with Emma, and Mrs. Richards saw her and knew right away who she was, and was mightily taken with her, but she didn't want Frances or her mother to know that she was Mr. Morrison's aunt; don't you see?

"You may say it happened," Caroline continued, "but I say the Lord brought it about. Why should that child walk into the library and stand before her great-grandmother's portrait, and Miss Frances come in and find her there, looking as much like Mr. Jack when he was little as two peas! Isn't he a splendid man! and just his old self. Why, when he came out yesterday, he ran upstairs to my room calling out just as he used to do,--'Where's Caroline?' It made me too happy to sleep."

"Did Mr. Morrison live at your house once?" Emma ventured to ask.

"Of course he did. When his mother died Miss Frances adopted him. He was six years old, and it was the same year I went to live with her,--thirty years this spring. You see, Mr. Jack's father, who was Mrs. Richards'

favorite brother, was thrown from his horse and killed when his little boy was only three. It was a dreadful blow to the whole family; his wife did not outlive him long, and his father, Judge Morrison, never recovered from the shock, for his only other son was an invalid.

"I used to think n.o.body had as much trouble as Miss Frances. She married very young and was left a widow before she was twenty-two, and it seemed as if Mr. Jack was her only comfort, for her father's mind began to fail, and the old home was so changed she couldn't bear to go there; but she was wrapped up in the child.

"In those days he wasn't hard to manage, though he had a quick temper; you couldn't help loving him on account of his sweet ways. He was devoted to Miss Frances, and gave up to her wonderfully, so I suppose she got to thinking she would always have things her own way with him, as she had with every one else.

"There were gay times, I can tell you, when he came home for his holidays, after he began to go away to school. He might bring home as many friends as he pleased, and there wasn't anything he couldn't have for the asking. Yet he wasn't half as spoiled as you'd think.

"The trouble began about the time he left college, but I didn't know much about it then. Miss Frances had set her heart on his being a lawyer like his grandfather; but though he studied it to please her, he did not take any interest in law. Then I think she wanted him to marry a niece of her husband's who used to be at the house a great deal. That is-- I don't think she really wanted him to marry at all, but was just afraid he'd take to some one she did not like. He had always been fond of Miss Elsie, and it did look contrary in him to turn around and be so indifferent when he found how his aunt felt.