It was well for Carey that a night intervened between his home-coming and the meeting with his family. The sharp words that swelled in the heart of each of them, and would surely have arisen to the lips of them, would not have been pleasant for him to hear. They might have been salutary; they undoubtedly would have been true; but it is exceedingly doubtful whether in his present state of mind he would have endured them graciously. He had had a good time, and he had come home. He was in no mood for fault-finding. The sight of the unfinished fireplace in the wide desolation of the renovated and enlarged room had given him a good-sized pang of remorse which was in a fair way to stay with him for a day or so. Sharp words would most certainly have dispelled it instantly and put him on the defensive. To blame as he undoubtedly was, he preferred to blame himself rather than to have his family do so; and the fact that he arose before light, before any of the others were even awake, and descended to the cellar quietly to pursue his interrupted work proved that he had begun to apprehend the likelihood of blame and wished to forestall it. It was Harry who awoke first, feeling rather than hearing the dull thuds of the silent worker in the cellar. Hastily dressing, he stole down in wonder and delight, and was so well pleased with what he saw and with the most unusually cordial greeting from his elder brother that he remained to help and not to blame. When Louise came down, followed almost immediately by Cornelia, and found the two brothers working so affably, with a whole row of stones reared in the parlor, they gave one another a swift, understanding glance, and greeted their brothers collectively and joyously as if nothing had happened for the last four days. Carey rattled off jokes, and worked away like a beaver, keeping them all in roars of laughter; and the father, waking late from his troubled sleep, heard the festive sound, and hurried down, relieved that the cloud of gloom had lifted from his home. He had had it in mind to give Carey a regular dressing down when he returned. Words fitly framed for such a proceeding had been forming red-hot in his worried mind all night. But the sight of his four children in gales of laughter over some silly little story Carey had told, and the sight of the clock hastening on to the moment of his car, restrained him; and perhaps it was just as well. Cornelia hurried him into his place, and gave him his breakfast, chattering all the time about the rooms and the changes, and so kept his mind busy. At last they all got away without a word of reproof to Carey, and Cornelia was left to wonder whether she ought to open the subject.