"I doubt that you could raise him--unaided," she said. And the boys, in their turn, mentally labelled her: "Nice woman." "But none of you is precisely stunted," added Mrs. Grey, looking up from her own considerable altitude into Basil's, and then into Bruce's face, both of which topped her by several inches. "Bruce is five feet eleven, good measure, and I am five feet ten," said Basil. "All the Rutherfords grow rank." "Like our grass," added Roberta, who had been quiet as long as she could be. "There's nothing but length--and poor quality--to the grass, though," she added, with a wicked look, to which she served an immediate antidote by pouring lemonade into the three rapidly emptying glasses. "You are new neighbors, I think," said Mrs. Grey, calmly removing a caterpillar from her cuff, and thereby rising high in Bartlemy's estimation, who was an embryo naturalist and scorned nerves. "We're here for a time--we came three weeks ago. We've taken the Caldwell place, and our guardian put us here with a tutor to get ready for college," said Basil. "I'm in my eighteenth year, but I'd like to wait for Bart if I could. And he's not as stupid as he looks--we think we can enter together in a year; we'd like to keep on side by side as long as we can--we've done it so far." "How pleasant that is to hear!" cried Mrs. Grey, heartily. "I'm sure you'll gain far more than you lose by waiting. You speak as though you were alone; are you boys all there are in the family?" "Our father is alive," said Basil, "but he is in the navy, and he's usually about the farthest father I know--just now he's in Japan for two years more. Our mother died when Bart was six. We wish she hadn't--" Basil stopped short. He had no idea that he was going to say this, but the look that sprang into Mrs. Grey's eyes when he alluded to his mother's loss had slightly upset him. Mrs. Grey understood. "I wish that she could have stayed to be proud of her three tall sons," she said. "But perhaps Wythie and Rob and Prue can coax you here to share in the mother feeling. We're fond of motherliness in the little grey house, Basil, and we do have good times in it. I must run away, or there will be a sad time in it when the girls come in hungry. They will tell you about our little grey house and its Grey denizens. Will you come often, and help us have good times?" She included the three lads in her warm glance, and quick affection leaped back at her from the three pairs of dark blue eyes. Mrs. Grey mothered everything that came near her, being one of the sort of women with a genuine talent for loving. She longed to bless and protect all creation, and fell to planning as she spoke how to give these motherless lads the womanly sympathy they must want in their setting out on the battle of life. "Indeed, we will come," said Bruce, speaking suddenly and for the first time.