From time to time Mrs. Denton dropped the cat out of her lap, and ran out to pull the wire which operated the latch of the street door; and then Ray heard her greeting some comer and showing him into the front room, where presently he heard him greeting her father. At last there was a sound below as of some one letting himself in with a latch-key, and then came the noises of the perambulator wheels bumping from step to step as it was pulled up. Mrs. Denton sat still, and kept on talking to Ray, but her sister went out to help her husband; and reappeared with a sleeping twin in her arms, and carried it into the room adjoining. The husband, with his pale face flushed from his struggle with the perambulator, came in with the other, and when he emerged from the next room again, Mrs. Denton introduced him to Ray. “Oh, yes,” he said; “I saw you with Mr. Kane.” He sat down a moment at the other window, and put his bare head out for the air. “It has grown warm,” he said. “Was the Park very full?” his wife asked. “Crowded. It’s one of their last chances for the year.” “I suppose it made you homesick.” “Horribly,” said the husband, with his head still half out of the window. He took it in, and listened with the tolerance of a husband while she explained him to Ray. “My husband’s so homesick for the old Family place--it _was_ a pretty place!--that he almost dies when he goes into the Park; it brings it all back so. Are you homesick, too, Mr. Ray?” “Well, not exactly for the country,” said Ray. “I’ve been homesick for the place I came from--for Midland, that is.” “Midland?” Denton repeated. “I’ve been there. I think those small cities are more deadly than New York. They’re still trying to get rid of the country, and New York is trying to get some of it back. If I had my way, there wouldn’t be a city, big or little, on the whole continent.” He did not wait for any reply from Ray, but he asked his wife, “Who’s come?” She mentioned a number of names, ten or twelve, and he said, “We’d better go in,” and without further parley he turned toward the curtained avenue to the front room. XVI.