“On Sundays.  I expect a McAlister dinner party, every Sunday night.  Otherwise, four times a day.  We have three elbow chairs, you know, and the hearth is a broad one.”

“You haven’t asked after Phebe,” Hubert said, after a pause.

“What was the use?  Billy had a letter from his mother, the day we left Helena, and I knew you would have had nothing later.”

“But we have.”

“What?”

“She sailed for home, to-day, on the Kaiserina.”

“Hubert!”

“Theodora?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that and no more.”

“How did you hear?”

“A cable, to-day.”

“But Mrs. Farrington said she was going to Italy.”

“Perhaps she is.”

“Not if she is coming home.”

“She isn’t.”

Theodora looked mystified, as much at the ambiguity of the pronouns as at the fact itself.

“Babe is coming home alone,” Hubert added.

“Is she ill?”

“Quite well, she says.”

“Then what in the world is she coming for?” Theodora’s tone expressed both indignation and incredulity.

“It passes my comprehension.  What do you think, Billy?”

Mr. Farrington took off his hat and pushed back his red-gold hair.  It was a trick he had, when he was worried or annoyed.

“I can’t imagine,” he said anxiously.  “Mother has enjoyed Babe and she has written often of Babe’s being happy over there.  It seemed a pleasant thing for them both; and I am sorry to have the arrangement broken up.  What has Babe written to you?”

“Constant ecstasies.  She has been perfectly happy, and has chanted the praise of your mother for paragraphs at a time.  I think there can’t have been any trouble, or Babe would have told us.  She isn’t the one to disguise her feelings and spoil a story for relationship’s sake.”

Theodora sighed.  Then she laughed.

“It is only another one of Babe’s freaks,” she said, with a blitheness which was meant for her husband’s ear.  “We must bide our time till she comes to explain herself.  Did you ever know her to do what you expected of her?”

It was nearly dark when the train rolled in at the familiar station.  The Farrington carriage was waiting, and beside it waited a grey-haired man in plain green livery.  The travelers hailed him as Patrick, and he greeted them with a delight that was out of all keeping with the severe decorum of his manner of a moment before.  Then, merry as a trio of children, they drove up the snowy streets, Theodora and Billy in wild rapture at the thought of being at home once more, Hubert more quiet, but none the less happy in the prospect of having his sister within reach again.

They were to dine at The Savins, that night, and they drove directly there.  The low red house rested unchanged on its hilltop where the twilight was casting greyish shadows across the snow.  Lights gleamed in all the windows; but no welcoming face was silhouetted against them.  Upstairs, Allyn was restlessly pacing his room at the back of the house; below, a sudden fragrance of burning meats had sent Mrs. McAlister flying to the kitchen, and for an instant the travelers stood alone in the broad front hall, with no one to welcome them.