“Welcome home!” cried Mrs. Blair bravely, and seized the lady’s hands nervously in her own. Then with a sudden impulse, as though to complete, beyond any criticism, her acceptance of the newcomer, she kissed her stepmother on the cheek. “You are just my height, aren’t you!” she exclaimed, stepping back. Wayne waited hat in hand, smiling. “Adelaide, this is my son, Wayne!” “Good morning! I am glad to see you,” said Wayne, bowing over Mrs. Craighill’s hand; and as he raised his head their eyes met with, it seemed, a particular inquiry and plea in hers. “I’ll attend to the baggage. Give me your checks, father.” It was over, this first meeting between Colonel Craighill’s wife and her husband’s children. As they walked through the waiting room there was a click of cameras. Other eyes than Mrs. Blair’s had already noted the new Mrs. Craighill’s outlines, and the films in the newspaper cameras had recorded a trim, graceful figure of medium height, a well-set head, crowned with a pretty toque, and a light travelling coat of unimpeachable cut. In the waiting room the Blair boys were presented, while their mother watched the meeting critically. A slight to her children, an indifference to their charm would have been fatal; but Mrs. Craighill bent to them graciously. She had even remembered their names, and applied them correctly. The lads suffered themselves to be kissed and were thereupon sent home in the Blair motor. Colonel Craighill had asked Mrs. Blair to come to his house for breakfast, and they were all soon seated in his car, which the chauffeur drove slowly, so that Colonel Craighill might point out to his wife features of the urban landscape that struck him as particularly interesting. As the rise of the boulevard lifted them out of the commercial district, the dark cloud that brooded above the rivers gave Colonel Craighill an opportunity to introduce his wife, with a wave of the hand, to the prodigious industries which thus advertised themselves upon the very sky. He was at the point of quoting the enormous tonnages to which the ironmongery of the region ran; but Mrs. Blair thwarted him. “Adelaide!” she cried. “There! Did you see how naturally I spoke your name the first time! I may call you that, mayn’t I?” The two ladies clasped hands, while Colonel Craighill smiled upon them in benignant approval. “I was going to call attention to that speck of soot that has just settled on your nose--your first!” Mrs. Blair continued. “Ah! there you have it now!” she concluded as Mrs. Craighill found the offender with her handkerchief. “That, we may say, marks your baptism into full citizenship,” beamed Colonel Craighill.