’I just wish I’d been there.  I’d carried mamma, and wouldn’t let her drop in the snow as papa did.  Where was I then, grandpa?’

But grandpa does not answer, and begins the story of the cherries and the ladder, which Tracy likes even better than that of the carpet bag, particularly the part where the white sun-bonnet appears in the window, and the shrill voice calls out:  ’Mr. Crazyman, Mr. Crazyman, don’t you want some cherries?’

This Arthur makes very dramatic and real, and Tracy holds his breath; and sometimes when the question is more real than usual, little Gretchen puts out her hand, and says: 

‘Iss, div me some.’

Then the boy and the old man laugh, and Tracy runs off after a passing butterfly, and Arthur goes on with talk to the baby and the other Gretchen beside him, until the former falls asleep, and he takes her to the crib he has had put in the bay window under the picture which smiles down upon the sleeping infant, whose guardian angel it seems to be.

The Tramp House has been repaired and renovated, the table mended, and the rat hole stopped up; and the trio frequently go there together, for it is the children’s play-house, where Arthur is sometimes a horse, sometimes a bear, and sometimes a whole menagerie of animals.  Once or twice he has been the dead woman on the table, with little Gretchen beside him in the carpet-bag, and Tracy tugging with all his might to lift her out; but after the day when he let her fall, and gave her a big bump upon the forehead, that kind of play ceased, and the boy was compelled to try some other make believe than that of the tragedy on the wintry night many years before.

Billy Peterkin has never married, and never will.  His heart-wound was too deep to heal without a scar to tell where it had been; but he and Jerrie are the best of friends, and he is very fond of her children.

Tom is still abroad, waiting for that fit of apoplexy which is to be the signal for his return; but the probabilities are that he will wait a long time, for Peterkin, who is himself afraid of apoplexy, has gone through the Banting process, which has reduced his weight from fifty to seventy-five pounds, and as he is very careful in his diet Tom may stay abroad longer than he cares to do, unless Ann Eliza’s persuasions bring him home to his dreaded father-in-law.  There was a little girl born to them in Rome, whom they called Maude, but she only lived a few weeks, and then they buried her under the daisies in the Protestant burying ground, where so many English and Americans are lying.  Ann Eliza sent a lock of the little one’s hair to her father, who had it framed and hung in his bedroom, and wore on his hat a band of crape which nearly covered it.