‘I’d like it first-rate,’ Harold said, his face brightening at the thought of earning fifty cents and seeing the show at the same time.

Half-dollars were not very plentiful with Harold, and he was trying to save enough to buy his grandmother a pair of spectacles, for he had heard her say that she could not thread her needle as readily as she once did, and must have glasses as soon as she had the money to spare.  Harold had seen a pair at the drug-store for one dollar, and, without knowing at all whether they would fit his grandmother’s eyes or not, had asked the druggist to keep them until he had the required amount.  Fifty cents would just make it, and he promised at once that he would come; but in an instant there fell a shadow upon his face as he thought of Tom, his tormentor, who worried him so much.

‘What is it?’ Mrs. Tracy asked, as she detected in him a disposition to reconsider.

‘Will Tom be up in the hall?’ Harold asked.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs. Tracy replied.  ’He will be in the parlors until ten o’clock, and then he will go to bed.  Why do you ask?’

‘Because,’ Harold answered fearlessly, ’if he was to be there I could not come; he chaffs me so and twits me with being poor and living in a house his uncle gave us.’

’That is very naughty in him, and I will see that he behaves better in future,’ said Mrs. Tracy, rather amused than other wise at the boy’s frankness.

As the mention of the uncle reminded Harold of the telegram, he took it from his pocket and handed it to her.

’Mr. Tracy said I was to bring you this.  It’s from Mr. Arthur, and he’s coming to-night.  I’m so glad, and grandma will be, too!’

If Mrs. Tracy heard the last of Harold’s speech she did not heed it, for she had caught the words that Arthur was coming that night, and, for a moment, she felt giddy and faint, and her hand shook so she could scarcely open the telegram.

Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed possession of the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged to them by right, and she had grown so into a life of ease and luxury, that to give it up now and go back to Langley seemed impossible to her.  She could see it all so plainly—­the old life of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen where she had eaten her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove that she could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to her own and her husband’s plates without leaving her seat.  She had been happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself, because she knew no better.  But now she did know better, and she ate her breakfast in an oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress at her elbow, and her buckwheats hot from a silver dish instead of the smoking griddle.  She had a governess for her two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her little Maude, who, in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry Dick St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.