Nor was this all. To Mrs. Kendall it seemed that almost every man, woman, and child in the place came to her door with inquiries and congratulations, together with all sorts of offerings, from flowers and frosted cakes to tidies and worked bedspreads. She was not ungrateful, certainly, but she was overwhelmed. Not only the cakes and the tidies, however, gave Mrs. Kendall food for thought during those first few days after Margaret's return. From the very nature of the case it was, of necessity, a period of adjustment; and to Mrs. Kendall's consternation there was every indication of friction, if not disaster. For four years now her young daughter had been away from her tender care and influence; and for only one of those four years--the last--had she come under the influence of any sort of refinement or culture, and then under only such as a city missionary and an overworked schoolteacher could afford, supplemented by the two trips to Mont-Lawn. To be sure, behind it all had been Margaret's careful training for the first five years of her life, and it was because of this training that she had so quickly yielded to what good influences she had known in the last year. The Alley, however, was not Five Oaks; and the standards of one did not measure to those of the other. It was not easy for "Mag of the Alley" to become at once Margaret Kendall, the dainty little daughter of a well-bred, fastidious mother. To the doctor--the doctor who had gone to New York and brought Margaret home, and who knew her as she was--Mrs. Kendall went for advice. "What shall I do?" she asked anxiously. "A hundred times a day the dear child's speech, movements, and actions are not what I like them to be. And yet--if I correct each one, 'twill be a continual 'don't' all day. Why, doctor, the child will--hate me!" "As if any one could do that!" smiled the doctor; and at the look in his eyes Mrs. Kendall dropped her own--the happiness that had come to her with this man's love was very new; she had scarcely yet looked it squarely in the face. "The child is so good and loving," she went on a little hurriedly, "that it makes it all the harder--but I must do something. Only this morning she told the minister that she thought Houghtonsville was a 'bully place,' and that the people were 'tiptop.' Her table manners--poor child! I ran away from the table and cried like a baby the first time I saw her eat; and yet--perhaps the very next thing she does will be so dainty and sweet that I could declare the other was all a dream. Doctor, what shall I do?" "I know, I know," nodded the man. "I have seen it myself. But, dear, she'll learn--she'll learn wonderfully fast. You'll see. It's in her--the gentleness and the refinement. She'll have to be corrected, some, of course; it's out of the question that she shouldn't be. But she'll come out straight. Her heart is all right." Mrs. Kendall laughed softly.