I'd just got the door locked up that night about nine o'clock, and was seeing to the window catches before I went upstairs, when there come a rap to my front door. "Who's there?" says I, with my hand on the bolt. "It's Nick Nordman, Calliope." "Land!" says I, letting him in. "I thought you'd gone off hitched to the Through." "I was," he says, "but I ain't. I'm going to wait till five in the morning. And I'm going to talk over something with you." Sheer through being flabbergasted, I led him past the parlor and out into the dining room and lit the lamp there. I'd been sewing there and things were spread on every chair. Think of receiving a millionaire in a place like that! But he never seemed to notice. He dropped right down on the machine cover that was standing up on end. And he put his elbow on the machine, and his head on his hand. "Calliope," he says, "it ain't the way I thought it'd be. I wanted to come back here," he says. "I been thinking about it and planning on it for years. But it ain't like what I thought." "Well," I says, soothing, "of course that's always the way when anybody comes back. They's changes. Things ain't the same. Folks has gone away--" He cut me short off. "Oh," he says, "it ain't that. I expected that. There were enough folks here. It's something else. When I went away from here twenty years ago, I had just thirty-six dollars to go on. Now I've come back, and I don't mind telling you that I've got not far from six hundred thousand invested. Well, from the time I went off, I used to plan how I'd come back some day, just about like I have come back, and see folks, and give something to the town, and give a lunch like I did to-day. I've laid awake nights planning it. And I liked to think about it." "Well," I says, "and you've done it." He didn't pay attention. "You remember," he says, "how I used to live over on the Slew with my uncle in the house that wasn't painted? He'd got together a cow somehow, and I use' to carry the milk. I never owned a pair of shoes till I was fifteen and earned them, and I never went to school after I was twelve. And when I went to the city I begun at the bottom and lived on nothing and went to night school and got through the whole works up to pardner for them I used to sweep out for. When I got my first ten thousand I thought: 'That's what I'm going to give that little old town--when I get enough more.' Well, I've done it, and I ain't got no more satisfaction out of it than if I'd thrown it in the gutter. And that"--he looked at me solemn--"was," says he, "the durndest, stiffest luncheon I ever et at." "Well," I says, "of course--" "When I think," he says, "of the way I planned it--with the men all coming around me, and slapping me on the back, and being glad to see me--" "Oh, Nick!" I says. "Nick Nordman! _Was_ that what you wanted?" He looked at me in perfect astonishment. "Why," says he, "ain't that what anybody wants?"