Katy felt afraid of Bell, and in fact, now that they were so near, she felt afraid of them all, notwithstanding Esther's assurances that they could not help loving her. During the six months they had been together Esther had learned to feel for her young lady that strong affection which sometimes exists between mistress and servant. Everything which she could do for her she did, smoothing as much as possible the meeting which she also dreaded, for though the Camerons were too proud to express before her their opinion of Wilford's choice, she had guessed it readily, and pitied the young wife brought up with ideas so different from those of her husband's family. More accustomed to Wilford's moods than Katy, she saw that something was the matter, and it prompted her to unusual attentions, stirring the fire into a still more cheerful blaze and bringing a stool for Katy, who in blissful ignorance of her husband's real feelings, sat waiting his return from the telegraph office, whither she supposed he had gone, and building pleasant pictures of to-morrow's meeting with her mother and Helen, and possibly Dr. Morris, if not Uncle Ephraim himself. The voyage home had been long and wearisome, and Katy, who had suffered from seasickness, was feeling jaded and tired, wishing, as she told Esther, that instead of going to New York direct she could go straight to the farmhouse and "rest on mother's bed," that receptacle for all her childish ills. "I mean to ask Wilford if I may," she said to herself, and her cheeks grew brighter as she thought of really going home to mother and Helen and the kind old people who would pet and love her so much. So absorbed was she in her reverie as not to hear Wilford's step as he came in, but when he stood behind her and took her head playfully between his hands, she started up, feeling that the weather had changed; it was not as cold and dreary in Boston as she imagined, neither did mother's bed seem as desirable a place to rest upon as the shoulder where she laid her head, playing with Wilford's buttons, and saying to him at last: "You went out to telegraph, didn't you?" He had gone out with the intention of telegraphing as she desired, but in the hall below he had met with an old acquaintance who talked with him so long that he entirely forgot his errand until Katy recalled it to his mind, making him feel very uncomfortable as he frankly told her of his forgetfulness. "It is too late now," he added; "besides you could only see them for a moment, just long enough to make you cry--a thing I do not greatly desire, inasmuch as I wish my wife to look her best when I present her to my family, and with red eyes she couldn't, you know."