"Tired, Mardy?" asked Wythie, turning to her mother as she entered, and Rob and Prue made room for her between them on the hearth. "What lovely, lovely times we do have in the little grey house!" she added. It was the refrain that the Greys had sung to all their pleasant times ever since the old anxieties had been laid to rest. CHAPTER THREE ITS OLD FRIENDS Friday was a gala-day in the little grey house. "Battalion B," the three tall Rutherford boys, were at Yale, pursuing their way towards their chosen vocations with commendable industry, and with no apparent detriment to their health. Every Friday the three B's came back to Fayre to spend "the week end," bringing with them the cheer which they had shed upon the Greys' pathway since their first meeting. "It is like having six children," Mrs. Grey said happily, as she shook her duster out the dining-room window. "The boys' coming sheds joy upon the weekly task of sweeping and setting straight." "It is a perpetual Thanksgiving Home-coming, isn't it, Mardy?" said Oswyth joyously. For though the Rutherfords were supposed to come to their own home, the Caldwell house, which they had occupied for nearly three years, with a competent housekeeper to preside over its destinies, their return was really to the little grey house, where they made their absence of five days a plea for spending the other two of each seven. "Your sister-in-law's coming," called Lydia from her watch-tower, the window beside the kitchen sink. Wythie hastily glanced around the room which her mother was dusting, while she herself was polishing silver, with newspapers carefully spread over the fine old mahogany dining-table. Aunt Azraella had been another Aunt Azraella since his family had been established in comfort by the success of the machine over which poor Sylvester Grey had spent the apparently fruitless hours which she had then so fiercely denounced. But she never could conquer her habit of criticism, and the girls still felt vague apprehension of what was coming at her heels when they saw their aunt crossing the grass. Rob was out; since the day when she alone had held her ground against Mrs. Winslow's opinion, and had thus been the means of winning for the family all that they now enjoyed, Wythie had been deposed from the first place in Aunt Azraella's respect, and Rob was now, as she had herself said, the favourite niece.