Mrs. Lawton came to the door with hands extended, and a totally bewildered expression on her face, while the same ideas were crowding the brain of both mother and daughter. Had Keith West gone out of her mind, or had a letter telling of her coming miscarried, and was her plight wholly the result of not having been met and having miscalculated the strength of the storm? Probably by this time she was no longer Keith West, but Mrs. James White. If so, where was the First Cause? Had there been a railway accident, or had she been “abandoned at the altar,” as the newspapers put such matters? “No, not into the kitchen,” expostulated Miss Keith, as Brooke would have led in; “let me stand here and drip a bit—that is, unless you can set down the little starch tub for me to stand in,” she added, as a shiver went up her spine, making her teeth chatter. “Nonsense, water cannot hurt oil-cloth, and you must go close to the fire while I take off these sopping things at once,” said Brooke, decidedly, pushing Miss Keith resolutely over the threshold and closing the door, thinking, as she afterward said, that if she had a lunatic upon her hands, she must neither hesitate nor argue. Meanwhile the Cub had returned from the barn and, throwing open the door, came upon the apparition of his tall and somewhat angular kinswoman, who three months before had gone away in such brave array, being rapidly divested of her outer garments by his mother and sister. Her sandy hair, usually trigly coiled about her crown, had fallen down and stuck to her face in gluey strings, suggesting, to his boyish fancy, seaweed clinging to the figurehead of some shipwrecked vessel that at last view had swept proudly from port, all sails set. Giving vent to a long-drawn “wh-e-w,” the Cub began to laugh; it wasn’t nice of him, but the scene was irresistibly funny. Not a word was spoken, Miss Keith as yet offering no explanation whatever; and while she managed to keep her usual poise, erect as a ramrod, she only moved her legs and arms to release or put on garments as Brooke guided, like a marionette. His laugh died away unheeded, and it was not until he whispered “What’s up?” in a somewhat awe-struck tone in Brooke’s ear that either of the women noticed him; and then Miss Keith gave a shriek, and snatching one of the stockings that Brooke had but just succeeded in peeling off, wrapped it around her neck, while Brooke said over her shoulder, “We don’t exactly know, but won’t you _please_ go and stay with father and coax Tatters with you,” for the dog was not a respecter of clothes, and his joy at seeing his old friend was more emphatic than convenient.