“Don’t squabble over me,” Miss Hamilton said in a meek little voice. Followed a burst of ready laughter. She said as it died out: “I’m going to send you home now, children. Come back tomorrow evening to dinner. Bring Kathie and Lillian with you. Robin, please invite Phil and Barbara. Tell Phil to bring her fiddle. I will invite Peter and Anne Graham, and Signor Baretti. He will like to come to our party. He and Peter will be company for Jonas. I shall make Jonas sit at the table with us.” The Travelers thought Miss Susanna’s sisterly regard for Jonas one of her finest characteristics. While he had been a youthful servitor of the Hamiltons during Brooke Hamilton’s declining years, he had filled the triple role of brother, servitor and friend to the Lady of the Arms during her long lonely reign in the great house. He was many years older than Miss Susanna, but still a strong, sturdy man. Jonas looked upon Miss Susanna as an empress, to be reverenced and obeyed. Miss Hamilton’s oft repeated assertion to him: “You are a direct importation of Providence, Jonas, willed me by Uncle Brooke,” had made a deep impression on him at first utterance. As a consequence, his one aim in life was that of faithful service. Rarely could she coax him to appear socially at the Arms, even among the few friends who knew his worth. “You’re always thinking up something perfectly, splendidly hospitable!” As she rose from her chair to see the Travelers to the front door Marjorie pounced lovingly upon the Lady of the Arms, wrapping both arms around her. “A hold up, a hold up!” cried Jerry. “I’m going to join in it.” She made a playful attempt to pry Marjorie’s arms loose from about the old lady. The others gathered around the pair, mischievous and laughing. They put Miss Susanna through a gentle wooling which left her with ruffled hair, her lace collar awry and her cheeks pink from the loving salutes of fresh young lips. The Travelers went down the wide stone walk from the house looking back, waving and calling gay good-byes to the small, alert woman at the head of the veranda steps. The gate reached, Marjorie turned to wave her hand again. She mentally contrasted Miss Susanna’s happy expression of the present occasion with the sharp, doubting, half resentful gaze the mistress of the Arms had turned upon her when she had first been ushered into the library by Jonas to meet Brooke Hamilton’s kinswoman. Where there had once been shadow, somber silence, loneliness, was now light of love, gay friendly voices, sympathy, companionship. It had been Miss Susanna’s wish that Marjorie and Jerry should be at the Arms to greet the return of Spring. Remembering this a rare, rapturous flash of exaltation swept over Marjorie. She was thinking as she waved her hand to the little old lady on the veranda that Spring had not only returned to the Arms. It had miraculously returned to Miss Susanna’s heart. ------------------------------------------------------------------------