Mrs. Joscelyn laid her hand upon it with a caressing touch; her poor thin white hands at which the women looked half-admiring, half-contemptuous, as good for nothing but to sew a seam and play the piano. It was a kind of link between Harry and the house that had been so unkind to him. “He’ll understand what it means,” she said to Joan, aside, as the cart lumbered off. Joan did not make any reply, nor did she very well understand her mother, nor know what it might be supposed to mean, but it was she who had packed all that love, forgiveness, and tender thought; which were so solidly represented in that hamper from home. And it lumbered off to the railway, and was despatched by the night mail, though that was an extravagant proceeding; and the White House was solaced visibly and lightened of its care. It had not been a practice to give Harry such a hamper when he went away. He got one at Christmas, and that had hitherto been supposed to be enough; but this had more in it than met the eye. And then there was a pause in the history of the house, a pause of suspense yet of hope and peace. Joan and her mother afterwards often looked back to these days, which did not last long, yet were sweet. The two were very good friends, not a jar between them, and Ralph Joscelyn was unusually quiet and subdued; and it happened that one or two visitors came to the house, a circumstance which did not often happen--touching one of whom, in this little lull of preparing events, we may as well take the opportunity of a word or two: for though nobody thought very much about him at that moment, he was a personage of some importance in the family life. CHAPTER XII. A NEW PERSONAGE.