“Not quite the same Roger, though,” said she, shaking her head.  “I expected this stain on your skin; but, dear me! your eyes look as if you had not a friend in the world.”

“How can they look so, when you give me such a welcome?”

“Dear old Roger, you are just the same,” said she, bestowing a little caress upon his sleeve.  “And if you remember the summer before you went away, you will not find that pleasant company so very much changed either.”  “I do not expect to find them at all.”

“Oh, then they will find you; because they are all here,—­at least the principals; some with different names, and some, like myself, with duplicates,”—­as a shier Kate came down toward them, dragging a brother and sister by the hand, and shaking chestnut curls over rosy blushes.

After making acquaintance with the new cousins, Mr. Raleigh turned again to Mrs. McLean.

“And who are there here?” he asked.

“There is Mrs. Purcell,—­you remember Helen Heath?  Poor Mrs. Purcell, whom you knew, died, and her slippers fitted Helen.  She chaperons Mary, who is single and speechless yet; and Captain, now Colonel, Purcell makes a very good silent partner.  He is hunting in the West, on furlough; she is here alone.  There is Mrs. Heath,—­you never have forgotten her?”

“Not I.”

“There is”------

“And how came you all in the country so early in the season,—­anybody with your devotion to company?”

“To be made April fools, John says.”

“Why, the willows are not yet so yellow as they will be.”

“I know it.  But we had the most fatiguing winter; and Mrs. Laudersdale and I agreed, that, the moment the snow was off the ground up here, we would fly away and be at rest.”

“Mrs. Laudersdale?  Can she come here?”

“Goodness!  Why not?  The last few summers we have always spent together.”

“She is with you now, then?”

“Oh, yes.  She is the least changed of all.  I didn’t mean to tell, but keep her as a surprise.  Of course, you will be a surprise to everybody.—­There, run along, children; we’ll follow.—­Yes, won’t it be delightful, Roger?  We can all play at youth again.”

“Like skeletons in some Dance of Death!” he exclaimed.  “We shall be hideous in each other’s sight.”

“McLean, I am a bride,” said his wife, not heeding the late misanthropy; “Helen is a girl; the ghost of the prior Mrs. Purcell shall be rediviva; and Katy there”------

“Wait a bit, Kate,” said her cousin.

“Before you have shuffled off mortality for the whole party, sit down under this hedge,—­here is an opportune bench,—­and give me accounts from the day of my departure.”