“Yes; last year.  Sadie, take Mr. Packer’s bag up to the spare room.  Stop cryin’, Papa.”

She spoke against her will.  She could not let him sit on the floor sobbing any longer.  His gleaming head afflicted her.  She had a queer emotion.  This seemed most unreal.  The gray hall wavered like a flashing view in a film.

“The barn’d be a fitter place for me, daughter.  I’ve been a——­”

“That’s all right, Papa.  You better go up and lie down, and Sadie’ll fetch you up some lunch.”

His hand was warm and lax.  Mrs. Egg fumbled with it for a moment and let it fall.  He passed up the stairs, drooping his head.  Mrs. Egg heard the cook’s sympathy explode above and leaned on the wall and thought of Adam coming home Wednesday night.  She had told him a thousand times that he mustn’t gamble or mistreat women or chew tobacco “like your Grandfather Packer did.”  And here was Grandfather Packer, ready to welcome Adam home!

The farmhand strolled off, outside, taking the seed of this news.  It would be in town directly.

“Oh, Dammy,” she said, “and I wanted everything nice for you!”

In the still hall her one sob sounded like a shout.  Mrs. Egg marched back to the dining room and drank a full glass of milk to calm herself.

“Says he can’t eat nothin’, Mis’ Egg,” the cook reported, “but he’d like a cup of tea.  It’s real pitiful.  He’s sayin’ the Twenty-third Psalm to himself.  Wasted to a shadder.  Asked if Mr. Egg was as Christian an’ forbearin’ as you.  Mebbe he could eat some buttered toast.”

“Try and see, Sadie; and don’t bother me.  I got to think.”

She thought steadily, eating cold rice with cream and apple jelly.  Her memory of Packer was slim.  He had spanked her for spilling ink on his diary.  He had been a carpenter.  His brothers were all dead.  He had run off with a handsome Swedish servant girl in 1882, leaving her mother to sew for a living.  What would the county say?  Mrs. Egg writhed and recoiled from duty.  Perhaps she would get used to the glittering bald head and the thin voice.  It was all most unreal.  Her mother had so seldom talked of the runaway that Mrs. Egg had forgotten him as possibly alive.  And here he was!  What did one do with a prodigal father?  With a jolt she remembered that there would be roast veal for supper.

At four, while she was showing the Ashland dairyman the bull calf, child of Red Rover VII and Buttercup IV, Mrs. Egg saw her oldest daughter’s motor sliding across the lane from the turnpike.  It held all three of her female offspring.  Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the new milk shed and the cider press.  When she waved him good-bye from the veranda she found her daughters in a stalwart group by the sitting-room fireplace, pink eyed and comfortably emotional.  They wanted to kiss her.  Mrs. Egg dropped into her particular mission chair and grunted, batting off embraces.