“Pshaw!” She laughed nervously.  “Of course we’re all of us glad to have you back.”

“Yes?” he said.  “Father?”

“Of course!  Didn’t he write and tell you to come home?” She did not turn to him with the question.  All the while she rode with her face directly forward.

“No,” he said; “father hasn’t written.”

She flushed a little.  “I expect I ought to’ve written sometime, or one of the boys—­”

“Oh no; that was all right.”

“You can’t think how busy we’ve all been this year, Bibbs.  I often planned to write—­and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up.  And I’m sure it’s been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe.  Of course we knew mamma was writing often and—­”

“Of course!” he said, readily.  “There’s a chunk of coal fallen on your glove, Edith.  Better flick it off before it smears.  My word!  I’d almost forgotten how sooty it is here.”

“We’ve been having very bright weather this month—­for us.”  She blew the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.

He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a decoration.  “Yes,” said Bibbs.  “It’s very gay.”  A few moments later, as they passed a corner, “Aren’t we going home?” he asked.

“Why, yes!  Did you want to go somewhere else first?”

“No.  Your new driver’s taking us out of the way, isn’t he?”

“No.  This is right.  We’re going straight home.”

“But we’ve passed the corner.  We always turned—­”

“Good gracious!” she cried.  “Didn’t you know we’d moved?  Didn’t you know we were in the New House?”

“Why, no!” said Bibbs.  “Are you?”

“We’ve been there a month!  Good gracious!  Didn’t you know—­” She broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily:  “Of course, mamma’s never been so busy in her life; we all haven’t had time to do anything but keep on the hop.  Mamma couldn’t even come to the station to-day.  Papa’s got some of his business friends and people from around the old-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner and ’house-warming’—­dreadful kind of people—­but mamma’s got it all on her hands.  She’s never sat down a minute; and if she did, papa would have her up again before—­”

“Of course,” said Bibbs.  “Do you like the new place, Edith?”

“I don’t like some of the things father would have in it, but it’s the finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me!  Papa bought one thing I like—­a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that’s perfectly beautiful; it’s the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and it’s eleven feet long.  But he would have that old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new dining-room.  You remember it—­a table and a watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and