“You had an easy journey; didn’t you?” Hubert asked.

“Yes; at least, as easy as it could be with Mac.”

“I think you have slandered Mac,” Mrs. McAlister observed.  “He seems as gentle as a cooing dove.”

Hope and Theodora exchanged glances, as Hubert said laughingly,—­

“That’s because he paid you a compliment.  Your judgment isn’t a fair one.”

But Hope only added,—­

“Wait and see what the morrow may bring forth.”

The morrow brought forth Mac, rested, refreshed, ready for mischief.  Before breakfast was on the table, he had had an unfriendly interview with Patrick, had come into collision with Melchisedek, and Mrs. McAlister met him hurriedly retiring from the kitchen with both hands full of fried potatoes.  The next that was seen of him, he was playing horse on the front lawn, and Allyn was the horse.  Even in his brief survey of the family, the night before, Mac had come to a decision upon two points.  He did not like his Aunt Phebe; he did like his Uncle Allyn.  And Allyn, unaccustomed to children though he was, promptly became the slave of his imperious young nephew.

“Oh, Hope, it is good to have you here,” Theodora said, with a tempestuous embrace, when Mrs. Holden appeared at the door of the writing-room, that morning.

“Then I am not in the way?”

“Not a bit.  I’m not writing, to-day; I can’t settle myself, when I know you are within reach.”

“Perhaps I’d better go back to Helena,” Hope suggested.

“No; I shall calm down in time; but I never get used to having you so far away.  It never seems quite right, when the rest of us are all here together.”

“I am a little terrified at the prospect of the coming week,” Hope said, as she sat down on the couch and looked across the lawn to where Mac was playing.

“What now?”

“Babe is to have her fresh-air child.”

“Hope!  You don’t mean it?”

“Yes, she has coaxed papa into giving his consent.  Is it a new idea to you?”

Theodora dropped her duster, and sat down beside her sister.

“It’s new to us all,” she said despairingly.  “We never heard of it till last night.  What will that girl do next?  She detests children, and she has about as much idea of discipline as she has about—­raising poultry.  It is Isabel St. John’s doing, I know.  She is Babe’s best-beloved friend; and where one leads, the other will follow.”

“Babe seems to be in earnest about it,” Hope said charitably.

“She’s in earnest about everything—­by fits and starts.  It only doesn’t last.  She seems to be losing something of her medical fervor, and probably this is taking its place.  I suppose she has met somebody who slums for a living, and the idea enchants her.  I used to have aspirations that way, myself; but I am coming to the conclusion that for me charity begins at home, and that it counts for more to make Billy comfortable than to make his life a burden with my hobbies.”