Peter arrived according to schedule and was met in the manner planned by our friends. As he stood on the train platform just behind a woman and a baby, I saw his great dark eyes, that seem fairly to glow out of his beautiful face, eagerly race over the crowd. When they rested on me they lit with what I thought was perfect joy until I saw them find Sam a few seconds later. That was the real thing, and I never loved Peter better than when I saw him hold Sam's hand in his while he was greeting me in a suppressed, lover-like way and was being introduced to people. Sam was also radiant. Peter and Sam and I are the eternal triangle that Peter is always talking into plots for plays--only Sam is the apex instead of me. Isn't it beautiful to have it that way? III THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER Hayesboro took Peter into its heart of hearts and then sighed for more to give him. This town is like the old man's horse whose natural gait is running away when it is not asleep. Peter woke it up and it took the bit in its mouth and bolted with him, while Peter clung to the saddle and had the time of his young poetic life. Mother accepted Peter with her usual placidity. She took him into her room and I suppose she examined him physically, for I saw her give him a dose of sarsaparilla tea every morning he was with us. I bought her five spools of the finest silk thread, ranging in shade from gray to lavender, to begin on a crocheted tie and pair of socks for him. Daddy was as good as gold to him and fell immediately into Judge Vandyne's attitude toward him. I knew he would. Eph maintained the dignity of the haphazard family at meal-times, and waited on Peter worshipfully at all others. The black beauty in the kitchen was heard to remark to the house-girl: "I hope that white man's skin will stretch, for I shore am going to stuff it. He am a insult to any respectable skillet or pot." She did, and at times I trembled for the poet. He read to Miss Henrietta Spain's school the poem on "Space" which the _Literary Opinion_ had copied; and he was the greatest possible success. Most of it I feel sure the school didn't understand. But just as he finished the last two lines--those lines the magazine had called "as perfect in winged lyric quality as any lines in the English language could be"--the Byrd, whom Sam had groomed carefully and brought in from the brier-patch for the occasion, rose, and, with his freckles black with the intensity of his comprehension of the poem, spread his little arms and said: "I fly! I fly!" "I fly! I fly, too!" A little chubkin in a blue muslin dress just behind him jumped to her feet and echoed him before they could be repressed.