She tried to make the most of all those little things that came into her mind just because this homecoming was so desolate a thing to be left alone with. She had many times lived through a homecoming. And when she had thought of coming home she had always, in spite of it all, thought of things as much the same. And now even she and Ted were strange with each other; it was Ted the little boy she knew; it was hard all at once to bridge years in which they had not shared experiences. It was the house itself seemed really to take her in. When she got her first sight of it all the things in between just rolled away. She was back. What moved her first was not that things had changed but that they were so much the same--the gate, the walk up to the house, the big tree, the steps of the porch; as she went up the walk there was the real feeling of coming home. Then they stepped up on the porch--and her mother was not there to open the door for her; she knew then with a poignancy even those first days had not carried that she would never see her mother again, knew as she stepped into the house that her mother was gone. And yet it would keep seeming her mother must be somewhere in that house, that in a little while she would come in the room and tell something about where she had been. And she would find herself listening for her grandfather's slow, uncertain step; and for Terror's bark--one of his wild, glad rushes into the room. Ted said that Terror had been run over by an automobile a number of years before. Nor was it only those whom death kept away who were not there. Her sister Harriett had not been there to welcome her; now it was evening and she had not yet seen her. Ted had merely said that he guessed Harriett was tired out. He seemed embarrassed about it and had hastily begun to talk of something else. And none of the old girls had come in to see her. The fact that she had not expected them to come somehow did not much relieve the hurt of their not coming. When a door opened she would find herself listening for Edith's voice; there was no putting down the feeling that surely Edith would be running in soon.