"What?" The pleasant voice held a note of surprised interrogation. My hand was taken in a firm professional clasp, and I looked up into the face of the great surgeon who had troubled himself with me so far as to give me the chance to exist. For the life of me, I could not find the right word of welcome in these circumstances, and the only result of the instantaneous mental effort to find it was, that those words of Delia Beaseley's, which I heard as I was regaining consciousness in V---- Court: "She's the living image", flashed into my consciousness with the illuminating suddenness of a re-appearing electric signboard. And, seeing them, rather than hearing them, I looked up into the fine homely face and smiled my welcome. It was the only one I had at my command just then. Something indefinable, intangible, perhaps best expressed as the visible diffused wave-current of consciousness' wireless telegraphy, showed in his face. Puzzled, concentrated thought was evident from the sudden contraction of the forehead. Nor did the look "clear up"; it remained as he greeted me--and I knew he had not the key to interpret the message, sent thus to him across an interval of twenty-six years. "Well, Mrs. Macleod, it's surely a success," he said, releasing my hand. "Success? Oh, no end!" Jamie interrupted him in his joyous excitement. "You 'll see!" "Come, Boy, give your mother a chance," said the Doctor, laughing. "We have practical witness that Marcia is all that Jamie claims she is." Mrs. Macleod spoke enthusiastically for her, and to cover my embarrassment I suggested that the Doctor should go at once to his room. "Oh, she 's canny! She wants you to see the improvements," Jamie cried, as he rushed upstairs two steps at a time after Mr. Ewart who, attended by the dogs, was investigating the region of the bedrooms. I think he doubted their comfort. The Doctor followed, and soon I heard his voice praising everything, with Jamie's lending a running accompaniment of jesting comment. It occurred to me then, that I had not heard the "lord of the manor" utter a word. Cale and Peter came in with the trunks, chests, gun-cases, with bags of ice-hockey sticks, kits, snow-shoes and skis--indeed, all the sporting paraphernalia for a Canadian winter. Within ten minutes, my clean passageway, laid with the brand-new rag carpet, was piled high with these masculine belongings, and the snow from eight masculine boots was melting and wetting the pretty strip into dismal sogginess! I began to understand why the passageways in the manor were laid with flagging, and I determined I would have the lower carpet taken up in the morning, that Jamie might not laugh at me. As Cale set down the last chest, he must have taken note of my despair, for he spoke encouragingly: "Makes a lot of difference in a house havin' so many men folks round." "I should think so, Cale, look at that carpet!"