"Here's something for you, mother," he said, assuming a cheerful voice, as he took a fold of fine silk from the trunk and held it up. "All the way from Paris." He laid it on his mother's lap and stooped and kissed her, and then turned hastily away to hide the tears that came to his own eyes as he saw her keen pleasure. "And here's a parasol for Laura. I don't know how I came to have that in here. And here's General Grant's autobiography for his namesake," he said, with an effort at carelessness, and waited to hear Grant rise. "Grant, won't you come in?" asked his mother, quiveringly. Grant did not reply nor move. Laura took the handsome volumes out and laid them beside him on the table. He simply pushed them to one side and went on with his reading. Again that horrible anger swept hot as flame over Howard. He could have cursed him. His hands shook as he handed out other presents to his mother and Laura and the baby. He tried to joke. "I didn't know how old the baby was, so she'll have to grow to some of these things." But the pleasure was all gone for him and for the rest. His heart swelled almost to a feeling of pain as he looked at his mother. There she sat with the presents in her lap. The shining silk came too late for her. It threw into appalling relief her age, her poverty, her work-weary frame. "My God!" he almost cried aloud, "how little it would have taken to lighten her life!" Upon this moment, when it seemed as if he could endure no more, came the smooth voice of William McTurg: "Hello, folkses!" "Hello, Uncle Bill! Come in." "That's what we came for," laughed a woman's voice. "Is that you, Rose?" asked Laura. "It's me--Rose," replied the laughing girl, as she bounced into the room and greeted everybody in a breathless sort of way. "You don't mean little Rosy?" "Big Rosy now," said William. Howard looked at the handsome girl and smiled, saying in a nasal sort of tone, "Wal, wal! Rosy, how you've growed since I saw yeh!" "Oh, look at all this purple and fine linen! Am I left out?" Rose was a large girl of twenty-five or thereabouts, and was called an old maid. She radiated good-nature from every line of her buxom self. Her black eyes were full of drollery, and she was on the best of terms with Howard at once. She had been a teacher, but that did not prevent her from assuming a homely directness of speech. Of course they talked about old friends. "Where's Rachel?" Howard inquired. Her smile faded away. "Shellie married Orrin McIlvaine. They're 'way out in Dakota. Shellie's havin' a hard row of stumps." There was a little silence. "And Tommy?" "Gone West. Most all the boys have gone West. That's the reason there's so many old maids." "You don't mean to say--" "I don't need to say--I'm an old maid. Lots of the girls are. It don't pay to marry these days." "Are you married?" "Not yet." His eyes lighted up again in a humorous way. "Not yet! That's good! That's the way old maids all talk."