She rumpled up the paper, and with a glance towards her grandmother she thrust it behind the sofa. "Pig!" remonstrated Val, under her breath, for once on the side of law and order. "Ain't a pig. I shall see what my new shoe-buttons say," Emmie whispered. "Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant. Ha! going to be a chieftess. Now what shall I wear? Silk, satin, calico, cotton," and on till she was able to announce, with dark eyes glancing and full of glee: "Satin!" "You cheated. You haven't any right to count the one that's off." "Course I have. They're brand-new shoes, and the buttons haven't any right to come off first time. And it's _goin'_ to be satin--green satin, bright, beautiful grass-green satin. Now I'll tell _your_ fortune," she added, amiably. But Val sprang up, crying: "He's come." There was the rattle of wheels, at all events, in the quiet side street. The two girls rushed to the door and down to the gate. A carriage stopped. Their father got out with his usual air of weary haste. He was saying something disparaging of that Europe he had never seen, applauding his nephew's return to his native land. Val, her grandmother's warning fresh in mind, caught up the lantern and held it high above her head, slanted slightly, so as to catch within the radius of light the tall, slight figure that followed her father so lightly up the broken steps. "Your own country has need of you," John Gano was winding up; "she is waiting for just such a man." He paused under the red-bud tree. Val still stood with the lantern conscientiously held up, lost for that first moment in her own absorbing impressions. Young Gano looked at her with quick realization of the eager, buoyant attitude, the uplifted face on which the strong light streamed, the wide, earnest outlook of eyes with so much more in them of question than of welcome, they might have been accustomed to sweeping far horizons from the watch-towers of the world. An infinitesimal pause, and then: "How do you do, America?" he said, smiling, and took his cousin's hand. Val felt instantly he was laughing at her for a kind of travesty of Liberty Enlightening the World. She drew back quickly, lowering the lantern. "I am Val," she said, "and this is Emmie." The younger girl held up her pretty face, and her cousin kissed her. "Where's grandmamma?" he said, eagerly, as he looked up.