"I thought you were never coming," he grumbled as she entered, already claiming her in true masculine fashion. "Good-bye for to-day, Mrs. Flinders," said Rob, turning back a radiant face to the drab woman regarding her with incredible sympathy concealed beneath her flat chest. "Good-bye, Roberta, and good luck to you; half you deserve would be enough to set you up for two lives. I'm sorry he can't sense the news I'll tell him, but I'll tell him just the same. He's set a lot by you ever since he got over being mad because you made him do the right thing by you when he run your place on shares, and that's ever since you was good to Maimie. Goodbye, Roberta." "Mardy, Mardy Grey!" called Bruce in the doorway of the little grey house. "Come and see my beautiful wife!" Mrs. Grey flew in from the kitchen where she was consulting with Rhoda, and that jovial person was so startled by Bruce's salutation that she followed to peer through the door at the strange lady. "Rob!" cried her mother, and Rob ran to her, letting herself be gathered in the loving arms and drawn down into her mother's lap in the rocking-chair, half laughing, half crying. "Oh, Bruce, dear Bruce, I am truly thankful this foolish child has come to her senses at last," cried Mrs. Grey, contriving to hold out a hand, to Bruce and to pull him down for the kiss which she gave him with her heart on her lips. "Yes, ma'am," said Bruce dutifully. "I thought you would be glad to have such a well grown son who could mend bones and administer drugs when anything happened in the family. To tell you the honest truth Rob came to her senses with such a rush that she gave me no choice today but to accept the offer which she practically made me." "Bruce, you wretch!" cried Rob. "Mardy, that dreadful story-telling Nellie Something, up at Green Pastures, told me that the operating knife had slipped, and that Bruce was stabbed fatally--wouldn't you have been sorry, too, if that were true?" "I don't understand, but I can safely say yes, I think," said her mother. "Never mind, Rob; what you ought to be ashamed of is having tormented Bruce for so long. You won't take her away from me, Bruce? The one stipulation I make is that you live here. Even that I can't insist on, but I do hope you will let me keep Rob?" "Why, Mardy Grey, there isn't a spot on earth I love like this little house of yours, and somehow I couldn't imagine Rob anywhere else. Neither of the other girls ever seemed so much a part of the home as Rob is," said Bruce. "To tell the truth I feel just as you do about it; it seems to me more suitable that Rob should be here with you than that Wythie and Basil should live with me--of course Prue will not live in Fayre," cried Mrs. Grey. "Rob was her father's 'son Rob,' you know, and she seems as much a part of the little grey house as its lichens. Dearest, best and bravest of daughters! I am glad that you know her as I know her, Bruce. Rob could be very unhappy in the wrong hands."