I knew this little house was made for kindness and love. I've always, since first it was built, had the feeling that it was blest. Sure indeed was the instinct that brought me away from England, doggedly dragging myself up the mountain to tumble my burdens down in this place. It invariably conquers. Nobody can resist it. Nobody can go away from here quite as they arrived, unless to start with they were of those blessed ones who wherever they go carry peace with them in their hearts. From the first I have felt that the worried had only got to come here to be smoothed out, and the lonely to be exhilarated, and the unhappy to be comforted, and the old to be made young. Now to this list must be added: and the widowed to be wedded; because all is well with Uncle Rudolph and Dolly, and the house once more is in its normal state of having no one in it who isn't happy. For I grew happy--completely so for the moment, and I shouldn't be surprised if I had really done now with the other thing--the minute I caught sight of Uncle Rudolph's face when I went downstairs. Dolly was sitting by the file looking pleased. My uncle was standing on the rug; and when he saw me he came across to me holding out both his hands, and I stopped on the bottom stair, my hands in his, and we looked at each other and laughed,--sheer happiness we laughed for. Then we kissed each other, I still on the bottom stair and therefore level with him, and then he said, his face full of that sweet affection for the whole world that radiates from persons in his situation, 'And to think that I came here only to scold you!' 'Yes, Uncle Rudolph,' I said. 'To think of it!' 'Well, if I came to scold I've stayed to love,' he said. 'Which,' said I, while we beamed at each other, 'as the Bible says, is far better.' Then Dolly went upstairs to tell Mrs. Barnes--lovely to be going to strike off somebody's troubles with a single sentence!--and my uncle confessed to me that for the first time a doubt of Dolly had shadowed his idea of her when I left him sitting there while I fetched her-- 'Conceive it--conceive it!' he cried, smiting his hands together. 'Conceive letting Germans--_Germans_, if you please--get even for half an instant between her and me!'--but that the minute he saw her coming down the stairs to him such love of her flooded him that he got up and proposed to her before she had so much as reached the bottom. And it was from the stairs, as from a pulpit, that Dolly, supporting herself on the balustrade, expounded Siegfried and Juchs.