Harris will come for you, & we will see what can be done for you. We think and hope that a place can be found for you in the Cyrus K. Ginn Old People's Home, where you can spend your last days, I guess this time you will want to behave yourselves, and Harris & I will be glad to have you at our home from time to time. After all my love & thoughtfulness for you--but I guess I need not say anything more, by this time you will have learned your lesson. Your loving daughter, LULU. Father and Mother had sat proudly on their porch the night before, and they had greeted passers-by chattily, like people of substance, people healthy and happy and responsible. Now they shrank on the swing; they saw nothing but Lulu's determined disdain for their youthful naughtiness; heard nothing but her voice, hard, unceasing, commenting, complaining; and the obese and humorless humor of Mr. Harris Hartwig. "She can't make us go back--confine us in this here home for old folks, can she, legally?" It was Mother who turned to Father for reassurance. "No, no. Certainly not.... I don't _think_ so." They sat still. They seemed old again. Just before dinner he started up from the swing, craftily laid his finger beside his nose, and whispered something very exciting and mysterious to Mother, who kept saying: "Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, I'd be willing to. Though it would be hard." Immediately after dinner they walked sedately down the village street, while blackbirds whistled from the pond and children sang ancient chants of play under the arc-lights at corners, and neighbors cried "'Evenin'" to them, from chairs on porches. They called upon the town newspaperman, old Lyman Ford, and there was a conference with much laughter and pounding of knees--also a pitcher of lemonade conjointly prepared by Mrs. S. Appleby and Mrs. L. Ford. Finally the Applebys paraded to the telegraph-office, and to Mr. Harris Hartwig, at Saserkopee, they sent this message: Come see us when can. Wire at once what day and train. Will meet. A sodden and pathetic figure, in his notorious blue-flannel shirt, and the suit, or the unsuit, which he had worn into Lipsittsville in the days when he had been a hobo, Father waited for the evening train and for Mr. Harris Hartwig. Mr. Hartwig descended the car steps like a general entering a conquered province. Father nervously concealed his greasy shirt-front with his left hand, and held out his right hand deprecatingly. Mr. Hartwig took it into his strong, virile, but slightly damp, clasp, and held it (a thing which Father devoutly hated) while he gazed magnanimously into Father's shy eyes and, in a confidential growl which could scarce have been heard farther away than Indianapolis, condescended: "Well, here we are. I'm glad there's an end to all this wickedness and foolishness at last. Where's Mother Appleby?" "She wasn't feeling jus' like coming," Father mumbled. "I'll take you to her."