It was October already. The old White house stood and shivered when the wind came sharp from the steely river. Lena, making ineffectual war upon fallen leaves, could not even keep the porch free from them, and they skirled and whirled and gently slid and madly rushed, while in the house their movement could be distinctly heard like light pattering footsteps, ever seeking, never resting. They even disturbed Lena's nerves. She looked about uneasily, while Dorothy laughed as they tied up each other's fingers, for they had been engaged in what Lena called "veather vending," and what Dorothy called "battening" the windows in her mother's room. For there was no question about it, the Lawtons had to face the winter right where they were. So Lena, with Dorothy's help, was doing her best to make a few rooms comfortable, and the hammering of nails and tacks had included thumb-nails as well. But what of that; their "veather vending" was turning lots of cold air from the rooms, and there was a comforting smell of freshly baked cookies coming from the kitchen, and great crimson and dappled branches of dogwood--Sybil's favorite autumn leaf--were over mantel and door, while dark purple and pale grayish lavender asters were nodding from corner and vase. For joy! oh joy! Sybil was coming home from the West--that vague, chaotic place that had swallowed her sister, an outsider, and now cast her back a professional, a "for-true" actress, with three real newspaper notices of her work, though they had been won under an assumed name. Dear Syb! how proud they all were! Papa had split up a cigar-box and made a little frame for her very first newspaper notice and had it hanging in the corner by the window where he shaved. And then, late that night, poor, pallid Jim Roberts had handed Sybil out of the shaky old hack at the White house door, and saying "Good-night," had turned to go, when grateful hands had drawn him inside, to receive courteous thanks from John Lawton and an explanation from Mrs. Lawton as to her present inability to send a comfortable carriage for her daughter and her escort. "Oh, Mrs. Jones was Miss Lawton's escort quite as much as I was!" stammered Roberts. "I--I only looked after the checks and things, and----" "And," said Sybil, "hungry and tired, came away up here with me instead of going straight to your supper and your bed. And, papa, he had no overcoat with him, and he shivered dreadfully in the hack after the fearful heat of the car." Whereupon Dorothy insisted upon coffee being brought to him, and Sybil cried out: "I smell fresh cookies! Oh, Lena, bring some here!" Then, still in hat and gloves, she stood before him, saying: "You shall not miss the next train down. I will watch the time for you, so please drink your coffee and eat your cookies in peace!"