It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain at the park if Arthur did come home.  She felt sure they could not, for Arthur would hardly approve of his brother’s stewardship when he came to realize how much it had cost him.  They would have to leave, and this party she was giving would be her first and last at Tracy Park.  How she wished she had never thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign brother, and who had only been invited for the sake of their political influence, which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy as a nobody, with very little money to spend, would not run as well, even in his own party, as Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with thousands at his command if he chose to take them.

‘It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,’ she said aloud, forgetting in her excitement that Harold was still standing there, gazing curiously at her.  ‘You here yet?  I thought you had gone!’ she said, half angrily, as she recovered herself a little and met the boy’s wondering eyes.

‘Yes’m; but you ain’t going to give the party up?’ he said, afraid of losing his half-dollar.

‘Of course not.  How can I, with all the people invited?’ she asked, questioningly, and a little less sharply.

’I don’t know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell ’em not to come,’ Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as easily that way as any other.

But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically: 

’If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom’s.  You are about his size.’

‘Thank you; I have my meetin’ clothes, and do not want Tom’s,’ was Harold’s reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.

The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason to expect him, her husband came home.

‘Well, Dolly,’ he said, the moment they were alone, ’this is awfully unlucky, the whole business.  If Arthur must come home, why couldn’t he have written in advance, and not take us by surprise?  Looks as if he meant to spring a trap on us, don’t it?  And if he did, by Jove, he has caught us nicely.  It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard the sound of music and dancing, only I don’t suppose Arthur has spent his substance in riotous living, with not over nice people; but there is no telling what he has been up to all these years that he has not written to us.  Perhaps he is married.  He said in his telegram, “Send to meet us.”  What does that mean, if not a wife?’