Griffith stopped reading the letter to laugh. "Tut, tut, tut! Here's more love in a cottage business for you. Well, well, I _am_ surprised, Katherine! I am----" "I am not. I've been expecting it all along--only--I did hope--I didn't think it would be quite so _soon_. Roy is only twen----" "Well, well,'pon my soul, it looks as if you didn't get out of one kind of a frying-pan in this world until you got into another. I was just building all sorts of castles about the future and--and to tell the mortal truth, Katherine, I never once thought of making a place for a daughter-in-law! Never once! Why----" There was a long pause. Griffith finished the letter in silence and handed it to his wife. As she read--she began back at the beginning--he gazed straight before him with unseeing eyes and a low hum ran along with unsteady and broken measure. "'How tedious--mmmm--mm--the hours, Mmmmm--no longer mmm mm; Sweet pros--mmm, swee--et mmm mm mm, mmmm, Ha--ave all mm mm mm mm to me.' But we'll have to expand the castle, Katherine--build on an addition for a daughter-in-law," he said as if there had been no break in the conversation, albeit almost half an hour had passed during which each had been wrapped in thought, and the singing--if Griffith's natural state of vocalization may be called by that name--was wholly unnoticed by both. "Yes," said Katherine in a tired voice; "yes, but I had hoped for a reunion of--of just ourselves first; but--but--we will try to feel that she _is_ one of ourselves--and surely we ought to be very grateful for the way they have nursed Roy and--His letter--" Katherine fell to discussing his letter and the new plans and needs, and how short a time it would be until they would come. Little Margaret hailed with delight the idea of a new sister. They all remembered the pretty face of the school-girl Emma. Letters of congratulation and welcome were written and posted, and it seemed to Katherine that nothing in the whole world could ever either surprise or startle her any more. She felt sure that whatever should come to her in the future would find her ready. She would take the outstretched hand of any new experience and say, "I was expecting you." Her powers seemed to her to have taken up their position upon a level surface and to have lost all ability to rise or fall. The fires had burned too close to have left material to ever flare up again. There was nothing left, she thought, to kindle a sudden or brilliant blaze. She had accepted the thought of a new daughter with a placidity which shocked herself, when she thought of it, until she analyzed her sensations or her lack of them.