"Bella," he whispered at the second when she turned the page and he thought he might venture to interrupt, "Bella, _wouldn't_ you read it to me?" The absorbed child made an impatient gesture, bent her head lower and snuggled down into her feast. She shook her mane of hair. "Gardiner," his mother noticed the appeal, "when will you learn to read for yourself? You are a big boy." "Oh, I'm not so vewy big," his tone was indolent, "I'm not so big as Bella. You said yesterday that you bought me five-year-old clothes." In the distance, above the noise of the wind, came the tinkle of the car-bell. Gardiner silently wished, as he heard the not unmusical sound, that the eternal, ugly little cars, with the overworked horses, could be turned into fairy chariots and this one, as it came ringing and tinkling along, would stop at the front door and fetch.... A loud ring at the front door made the little boy spring up. His sister frowned and glanced up from her book. "It isn't father!" she flashed out at him. "He's got his key. You needn't look scared yet, Gardiner. It is a bundle or a beggar or something or other stupid. Don't disturb." However, the three of them listened, and in another second the door of the sitting-room was opened by a servant and, behind the maid, on the bare wood floor of the stairs, there fell a heavy step and a light step, a light step and a heavy step. Bella never forgot the first time she heard those footfalls. The lady at the table put her sewing down, and at that moment, behind the servant, a young man came in, a tall young man, holding out his hand and smiling a wonderful and beautiful smile. "Aunt Caroline. I'm Antony Fairfax from New Orleans. I've just reached New York, and I came, of course, at once to you." * * * * * Not very much later, as they all stood about the table talking, Bella uncurled and once upon her feet, astonishingly tall for twelve years old, stood by Fairfax's side, while Gardiner, an old-fashioned little figure in queer home-made clothes, flushed, delicate and timid, leaned on his mother. The older woman had stopped sewing. With her work in her lap she was looking at the seventh son of her beautiful sister of whom she had been gently, mildly envious all her life. Bella said brusquely: "You've got an awfully light smile, Cousin Antony." He laughed. "I suppose that comes from an awfully light heart, little cousin!" "Bella," her mother frowned, "don't be personal. You will learn not to mind her, Antony; she is frightfully spoiled." The little girl threw back her hair. "And you've got one light step, Cousin Antony, and one heavy step. No one ever came up our stairs like that before. How do you do it?" The stranger's face clouded. He had been looking at her with keen delight, and he was caught up short at her words. He put out his deformed shoe. "This is the heavy step."