“No—­guess.  Think of everybody you ever heard of.  Those you have seen and those you—­”

“Oh, I know—­Aunt Lucy.”

“Yes, and she’s coming home.  Home, Archie, think of it, after all these years!”

“Well, that’s bully!  She won’t know me, will she?  I never saw her, did I?”

“Yes, when you were a little fellow.”  It was difficult to keep the tremor out of her voice.

“Will she bring any dukes and high daddies with her?”

“No,” laughed Jane, “only her little daughter Ellen, the sweetest little girl you ever saw, she writes.”

“How old is she?”

He had slipped his arm around his mother’s waist now and the two were “toeing it” up the path, he stopping every few feet to root a pebble from its bed.  The coming of the aunt was not a great event in his life.

“Just seven her last birthday.”

“All right, she’s big enough.  We’ll take her out and teach her to fish.  Hello, granny!” and the boy loosened his arm as he darted up the steps toward Martha.  “Got the finest mess of fish coming up here in a little while you ever laid your eyes on,” he shouted, catching the old nurse’s cap from her head and clapping it upon his own, roaring with laughter, as he fled in the direction of the kitchen.

Jane joined in the merriment and, moving a chair from the hall, took her seat on the porch to await the boy’s return.  She was too happy to busy herself about the house or to think of any of her outside duties.  Doctor John would not be in until the afternoon, and so she would occupy herself in thinking out plans to make her sister’s home-coming a joyous one.

As she looked down over the garden as far as the two big gate-posts standing like grim sentinels beneath the wide branches of the hemlocks, and saw how few changes had taken place in the old home since her girl sister had left it, her heart thrilled with joy.  Nothing really was different; the same mass of tangled rose-vines climbed over the porch—­now quite to the top of the big roof, but still the same dear old vines that Lucy had loved in her childhood; the same honeysuckle hid the posts; the same box bordered the paths.  The house was just as she left it; her bedroom had really never been touched.  What few changes had taken place she would not miss.  Meg would not run out to meet her, and Rex was under a stone that the doctor had placed over his grave; nor would Ann Gossaway peer out of her eyrie of a window and follow her with her eyes as she drove by; her tongue was quiet at last, and she and her old mother lay side by side in the graveyard.  Doctor John had exhausted his skill upon them both, and Martha, who had forgiven her enemy, had sat by her bedside until the end, but nothing had availed.  Mrs. Cavendish was dead, of course, but she did not think Lucy would care very much.  She and Doctor John had nursed her for months until the end came, and had then laid her away near the apple-trees she was so fond of.  But most of the faithful hearts who had loved her were still beating, and all were ready with a hearty welcome.