I rather hoped to affirm something gracious, and masterful of myself--not to say of him; but suddenly that whole lonely year was back again, most of it in my throat. And though I gave up saying anything at all, I cannot have been unintelligible. Indeed, I know that I was not unintelligible, for when, in a little while, Calliope, who was still with me, opened my front door and emerged briskly to the veranda, she seems to have understood in a minute. "Well said!" Calliope cried, and made a little swoop down from the threshold and stood before us, one hand in mine and one outstretched for his; "I knew, as soon as I woke up this morning, I felt special. I thought it was my soul, sittin' up in my chest, an' wantin' me to spry round with it some, like it does. But I guess now it was this. Oh, this!" she said. "Oh, I sp'ose I'd rilly ought to hev an introduction before I jump up an' down, hadn't I?" "No need in the world, Calliope," he told her; "come on. I'll jump, too." And that was an added joy--that he had read and re-read that one Friendship letter of mine, written on the night of Delia More's return, until it was as if he, too, knew Calliope. But before all things was the wonder of the justice and the grace which had made the letter of that night, when I, too, "took stock," yield such return. It was Calliope who led the way indoors at last, and he and I who followed like her guests. From the edges of consciousness I finally drew some discernment of the place of coffee and rolls in a beneficent universe, and presently we three sat at his breakfast table. And not until then did Calliope remember her other news. "Land, land," she said, "I like to forgot. Who do you s'pose I had a telephone from just before you come? Delia. She'd just got home this morning on the Fast Mail. An' the Proudfits'll be here, noon train." Delia indeed had come on the same glorified train that Abel and I had seen stop at the draw, only she had alighted at Friendship station and had hurried up to the Proudfits' to make ready for their home-coming. And since those whom we know best never come to Friendship without a welcome, it was instantly incumbent on us all to be what Calliope called "up in arms an' flyin' round." As soon as we were alone:--