"He hasn't enough to eat," Mrs. Anderson said. "Harriet does not give him enough to eat. It is a shame. If I were in his place I would get married." "He says he is tired out teaching. He talks about the friction of so many natures on his." "Of course there is a friction," said Mrs. Anderson, "but he could stand it if he had more to eat. Let us have a dinner next Sunday night; let us have a roast turkey and a pudding. We will have lunch at noon. Henry is very fond of turkey, and it is late enough to get good ones." "Shall we ask Harriet?" inquired Anderson, with a lurking mischief. His mother looked at him with quick suspicion. "You don't want her asked?" she said. "Why should she be asked? She never is." "I don't know but with an extra dinner--" "She has her mission," Mrs. Anderson said, with firmness. "You are eating nothing yourself, Randolph." Presently she looked at her son with an inscrutable expression. "Are the Carrolls all gone?" she asked. Anderson cut himself a bit of beefsteak carefully before replying. "Some of them, I believe," said he. "I heard Mrs. Carroll and her sister and daughter and the boy all went yesterday morning. Josie Eggleston came in about the Rainy Day Club meeting, this morning, and she told me." There was something so interrogative in his mother's tone that Anderson was obliged to say something. "They all went except the daughter, I believe," he said. "The girl who was here?" "Yes." "Then she didn't go?" "She went as far as Lancaster, but she came back?" "Came back?" "Yes. She didn't want to leave her father alone, and--under a cloud, as he seems to be, and she knew if she declared she was not going there would be opposition--that, in fact, her mother would not go." "I don't think much of her for going, anyway," said Mrs. Anderson. "Leaving her husband all alone. I don't care what he had done, he was her husband, and I dare say he cheated on her account, mostly. She ought not to have gone." "They wanted her to go; she is not very strong; and the sister is really ill," said Anderson, "and so the daughter planned it. She went as far as Lancaster, then she got off the train." "Why, I should think her mother would be crazy?" "She sent word back, a letter by Eddy. He got off the train with her; the train stopped there a few minutes." "Then she came back?" "Yes." "And she is going to stay with her father?" "Yes." "Oh!" said Mrs. Anderson. After dinner Anderson sat beside the sitting-room window with his noon mail, as was his custom, for a few minutes before returning to the store, and his mother came up behind him. She stroked his hair, which was thick and brown, and only a little gray on the temples. "She is a very pretty girl, and I think she is a dear child to come back and not leave her father alone," she said. Anderson did not look up, but he leaned his head caressingly towards his mother.