Thus it happened that after five summers in the country and five winters in the towns the dream of dreams came true, and Raphael Christmas and his sister Mary arrived from Erzerum. What excitement there was in the Wescott family and in the Wescott village, when on a Mary Christmas day, just five years from the first, this great announcement was proudly made under the apple trees! Even Mary and Cynthia, with their braids turned under and college only two years away, were thrilled to their finger-tips, and John and Roger refused to let Mary Christmas go on her way until she had promised to bring Raphael with her the following spring. But Raphael Christmas, it must be confessed, was a sore disappointment. When, the news of his mother’s approach having been brought to them by the doctor in his carriage, they ran to meet her up the hill, and saw a tall, awkward boy in clothes like their own, they were all conscious of a sinking feeling within themselves. No imagination, even of the most leaping and vivid variety, could see in this overgrown lad, who shifted uneasily from one side of the road to the other, threw stones at sparrows, and was impolite to his mother, one who had lived in the Garden of Eden and had looked upon Mount Ararat with its light-touched shadow of the ark. Not the most friendly feeling in the world could transform his dark, thin face, with its shrewd black eyes and its total lack of all those qualities which made his mother’s beautiful, into the welcome one of a valued, if infrequent, companion. Swift Americanization, a process at that time relatively unhampered by theories, had left its marks on Raphael Christmas. A year at school in Portland had taught him many things. Among the most outstanding of these were an astounding command of American slang of a range and versatility known to few natives, the art of chewing gum noisily and continuously, and the most rampant desire to lose as soon as possible all traces of his foreign birth. This longing prompted him to an almost continual nagging of his mother. Her red silk handkerchief, the gold coins in her ears, and her gold-laced bodice annoyed him. His playfellows in Portland laughed at them and taunted him. Whenever his quick eyes saw money pass into her hands from the sale of anything, he began his questions. “There’s money, Ma! For a dress, ain’t it--a real dress, and a hat? Yes?” “There’s money! You buy a hat now, and take out the coins?” He had grown quickly to dislike all references to Armenia, and only tolerated his mother’s fervent hopes that he might some day avenge his father’s death, because he liked the picture of himself, knife-armed, and giving blood for blood.