"Foundlings' Home," explained Dick, briefly, with a wink at Harlan. "They're late this year." Dorothy was speechless with amazement and despair. Before Harlan had begun to think connectedly, one of the twins had darted into the house and bumped its head on the library door, thereupon making the Jack-o'-Lantern hideous with much lamentation. The mother, apparently tired out, came in as though she had left something of great value there and had come to get it, pausing only to direct Harlan to pay the stage driver, and have her trunks taken into the rooms opening off the dining-room on the south side. Willie took a mouth-organ out of his pocket and rendered a hitherto unknown air upon it with inimitable vigour. In the midst of the confusion, Claudius Tiberius had the misfortune to appear, and, immediately perceiving his mistake, whisked under the sofa, from whence the other twin determinedly haled him, using the handle which Nature had evidently intended for that purpose. "Will you kindly tell me," demanded Mrs. Carr, when she could make herself heard, "what is the meaning of all this?" "I do not understand you," said the mother of the twins, coldly. "Were you addressing me?" "I was," returned Mrs. Carr, to Dick's manifest delight. "I desire to know why you have come to my house, uninvited, and made all this disturbance." "The idea!" exclaimed the woman, trembling with anger. "Will you please send for Mr. Judson?" "Mr. Judson," said Dorothy, icily, "has been dead for some time. This house is the property of my husband." "Indeed! And who may your husband be?" The tone of the question did not indicate even faint interest in the subject under discussion. Dorothy turned, but Harlan had long since beat an ignominious retreat, closely followed by Dick, whose idea, as audibly expressed, was that the women be allowed to "fight it out by themselves." "I can readily understand," went on Dorothy, with a supreme effort at self-control, "that you have made a mistake for which you are not in any sense to blame. You are tired from your journey, and you are quite welcome to stay until to-morrow." "To-morrow!" shrilled the woman. "I guess you don't know who I am! I am Mrs. Holmes, Rebecca Judson's own cousin, and I have spent the Summer here ever since Rebecca was married! I guess if Ebeneezer knew you were practically ordering his wife's own cousin out of his house, he'd rise from his grave to haunt you!" Dorothy fancied that Uncle Ebeneezer's portrait moved slightly. Aunt Rebecca still surveyed the room from the easel, gentle, sweet-faced, and saintly. There was no resemblance whatever between Aunt Rebecca and the sallow, hollow-cheeked, wide-eyed termagant, with a markedly receding chin, who stood before Mrs. Carr and defied her. "This is my husband's house," suggested Dorothy, pertinently.