Her father and mother had shocked her with their modes of speech when she came home, and she had ventured to rebuke them. She felt now that they ought to have spanked her. A great tenderness welled up in her heart for them and their homely ways. She wanted to be like them. The village was taking her back into its slumberous comfortableness. She would waken from her reveries to hear the aliens arguing their alien rules of speech. It suddenly struck her that they were all wrong, anyway. She felt an impulse to run for a broom and sweep them off into space. She grew curt with them. They felt the chill and dropped away, all but Orson. At last his lonely mother bullied his father into recalling him from the Western wilds. He called on Amelie to bid a heartbreaking good-by. He was disconsolate. He asked her to write to him. She promised she would. He was excited to the point of proposing. She declined him plaintively. She could never leave the old folks. "My place is here," she said. He left her and walked down the street like a moving elegy. He suffered agonies of regret till he met a girl on the East-bound train. She was exceedingly pretty and he made a thrilling adventure of scraping acquaintance with her mother first, and thus with her. They were returning to Boston, too. They were his home folks. When at last the train hurtled him back into Massachusetts he had almost forgotten that he had ever been in Carthage. He had a sharp awakening. When he flung his arms about his mother and told her how glad he was to see her, her second exclamation was: "But how on uth did you acquiah that ghahstly Weste'n accent?" * * * * * One evening in the far-off Middle West the lonely Amelie was sitting in her creaking hammock, wondering how she could endure her loneliness, plotting how she could regain her old lover. She was desperately considering a call upon his sister. She would implore forgiveness for her sin of vanity and beg Tudie's intercession with Arthur. She had nearly steeled herself to this glorious contrition when she heard a warning squeal from the front gate, a slow step on the front walk, and hesitant feet on the porch steps. And there he stood, a shadow against the shadow. In a sorrowful voice he mumbled, "Is anybody home?" "I am!" she cried. "I was hoping you would come." "No!" "Yes. I was just about ready to telephone you." There was so much more than hospitality in her voice that he stumbled forward. Their shadows collided and merged in one embrace. "Oh, Amelie!" he sighed in her neck. And she answered behind his left ear: "Don't call me Amelie any more. I like Em betterr from you! It's so shorrt and sweet--as you say it. We'll forget the passt forreverr." "Am! my dolling!" "Oh, Arrthurr!" THE END RECENT BOOKS OF TRAVEL * * * * * _IN VACATION AMERICA_ By HARRISON RHODES