So Gladness had remained, but not out in the barn. Somehow she had found her way up to the rest room and its peace must have appealed to her, for she would stay there hours, dozing with half closed jade green eyes and incurved paws. Kit said she had taken Miss Patterson’s place as nurse, and was ever so much more dependable and sociable to have around. “Father, dear,” Jean exclaimed, entering the quiet room like an autumn flurry of wind. “What do you think? Cousin Roxy has just ’phoned, and she wants me to tell you two Boston cousins are there. Did you hear the machine go up this afternoon? Beth and Elliott Newell. Do you remember them?” “Rather,” smiled Mr. Robbins. “It must be little Cousin Beth and her boy. I used to visit at her old home in Weston when I was a little boy. She wanted to be an artist, I know.” Jean had knelt before the old gray rock fireplace, slipping some light sticks under the big back log. At his last words she turned with sudden interest and sat down cross legged on the rug just as if she had been a little girl. “Oh, father, an artist? And did she study and succeed?” “I think so. I remember she lived abroad for some time and married there. Her maiden name was Lowell, Beth Lowell.” “Did she marry an artist too?” Jean leaned forward, her eyes bright with romance, but Mr. Robbins laughed. “No, indeed. She married Elliott’s father, a schoolmate from Boston. He went after her, for I suppose he tired of waiting for Beth’s career to come true. Listen a minute.” Up from the lower part of the house floated strains of music. Surely there had never issued such music from a mouth organ. It quickened one into action like a violin’s call. It proclaimed all that a happy heart might say if it had a mouth organ to express itself with. And the tune was the old-fashioned favorite of the fife and drum corps, “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” “It must be Joe,” Jean said, smiling mischievously up at her father, for Joe was still unknown to the master of the house. She ran out to the head of the stairs. “Can Joe come up, Motherie?” Up he came, fresh from a tubbing, wearing Doris’s underwear, and an old shirt of Mr. Robbins’, very much too large for him, tucked into his worn corduroy knee pants. His straight blonde hair fairly glistened from its recent brushing and his face shone, but it was Joe’s eyes that won him friends at the start. Mixed in color they were like a moss agate, with long dark lashes, and just now they were filled with contentment. “They wanted me to play for them downstairs,” he said gravely, stopping beside Mr. Robbins’ chair. “I can play lots of tunes. My mother gave me this last Christmas.” This was the first time he had mentioned his mother and Jean followed up the clue gently. “Where, Joe?” He looked down at the burning logs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Over in Providence. She got sick and they took her to the hospital and she never came back.” “Not at all?” He shook his head.