Mrs. Bogardus leased her house in town, and retired before the ghosts, but not escaping them; Stone Ridge must be put in order for its new master and mistress, and Stone Ridge had its own ghosts. She informed her absentees that, before their return, she should have left for Southern California to look after some investments which she had neglected there of late. It was then she spoke of her plan for restoring the old house by pulling down that addition which disfigured it; and Paul had objected to this erasure. It would take from the house's veracity, he said. The words carried their unintentional sting. But it was Moya's six lines at the bottom of his page that changed and softened everything. Moya--always blessed when she took the initiative--contrived, as swiftly as she could set them down, to say the very words that made the home-coming a coming home indeed. “Will Madam Bogardus be pleased to keep her place as the head of her son's house?” she wrote. “This foolish person he has married wants to be anything rather than the mistress of Stone Ridge. She wants to be always out of doors, and she needs to be. Oh, must you go away now--now when we need you so much? It cannot be said here on paper how much _I_ need you! Am I not your motherless daughter? Please be there when we come, and please stay there!” “For a little while then,” said the lonely woman, smiling at the image of that sweet, foolish person in her thoughts. “For a little while, till she learns her mistake.” Such mistakes are the cornerstone of family friendship. * * * * * It was an uneventful summer on the Hill, but one of rather wearing intensity in the inner relations of the household, one with another; for nothing could be quite natural with a pit of concealment to be avoided by all, and an air of unconsciousness to be carefully preserved in avoiding it. Moya's success in this way was so remarkable that Paul half hated it. How was it possible for her to speak to his mother so lightly; never the least apparent premeditation or fear of tripping; how look at her with such sweet surface looks that never questioned or saw beneath? He could not meet his mother's eyes at all when they were alone together, or endure a silence in her company. Both women were of the type called elemental. They understood each other without knowing why. Moya felt the desperate truth contained in the mother's falsehood, and broke forth into passionate defense of her as against her husband's silence. He answered her one day by looking up a little green book of fairy tales and reading aloud this fragment of “The Golden Key.” “'I never tell lies, even in fun.' (The mysterious Grandmother speaks.) “'How good of you!' (says the Child in the Wood.) “'I couldn't if I tried. It would come true if I said it, and then I should be punished enough.'” Moya's eyes narrowed reflectively.