"There is no news, except that we have Polly Flinders here for a visit with no end in sight; her father is paralysed and has squandered all his money in worthless stocks," Prue was saying, in reply to Bartlemy's demand for news. "Whew! As though that weren't news enough!" Bruce cried, sitting erect. "Fancy Flinders squandering! And paralysed, is he? The poor old fellow! He has been rather decent since your father died." "Very decent," assented Rob. "And Hester was up, and brought her cousin Lester Baldwin, fresh from Japan. He is just like her father. And Hessie has some new longing, which I did not quite get at; something to do with helping incurable cripple children in the tenements," she continued. "That sounds like the most interesting and sensible scheme she has had yet," said Bruce heartily. "But this cousin--You like Mr. Baldwin; did you say the Japaned cousin was like him?" And Bruce scowled melodramatically. "Precisely," said Rob. "Only nicer." "Come up to our other house, Basil," said Bruce. "I won't linger here!" "We'll be back after supper," he added, relenting as the battalion filed out of the little grey house. "We must go up to look at the Caldwell house, but we'll come home here as soon as our duty is done." "It's good to get home, Wythie," said Basil turning back on the steps, just as he spoke and just as he turned back each week at the same hour. CHAPTER FOUR ITS DREADFUL NIGHT "I saved a life to-day, Bruce," said Rob. The Rutherford boys had got back to the little grey house, the evening had shut in around it, shutting out all the world except that small fragment of it which centred around the old hearth. Over in the corner, under her green-shaded sewing lamp, sat the mother without whom the happiness of the six young people would have been incomplete, and this was true although the six were drifting more and more into the habit of being three pairs. Bartlemy was never tired of vainly trying to satisfy himself in painting Prue's wonderful colouring, and, if the truth were told, Prue never tired of having him try. Bartlemy's talent was developing into something to be taken seriously; already his brothers were making up their minds to the first parting when they should be graduated together. Basil and Bruce had delayed college till Bartlemy could enter with them, but evidently their ways would lie together no further. Bartlemy must go away to study in Italy and France, for his boyish nickname of Fra Bartolomeo was proving prophetic--Bartlemy would be a painter. Wythie and Basil never seemed to have very much to talk about, but they drifted beside each other invariably, and their many moments of silence seemed to be quite as full of utterance as their moments of speech, as the observant Grey mother noted with a satisfaction that could not be wholly free from regret.