“There, there, dear. Don’t get excited. I’m afraid I’ve told you too suddenly. Your mother stopped with Alice to have me come on and let you know. They’ll be here after a little while. Donald is out tethering the ponies, and waiting, for the same reason.” “O Nate, now I’m entirely happy!” And Lissa caught up the child and laughed and cried while she kissed it ecstatically. “Hello, sis! Aren’t you embracing the wrong one? You might save a little for the rest of us.” Lissa looked up to see Donald’s laughing face framed in the doorway. She extended both hands to him. “O Don, I’m so happy, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!” she gasped, her tears mingling with her smiles. “Well, Lissa, I don’t actually know which is the more becoming to you—perhaps both. I always did like April weather. You are fully as dazzling as a rainbow now. It was rather bad for us to come and surprise you, that’s a fact; but I knew you wouldn’t mind me, and Nathan tells me you didn’t receive your mother’s letter.” “No, and I’m glad I didn’t. I could never have waited for her to get here; no, _never_! I should have started alone across the prairies, horseback, to meet her. But how changed you are, Don. You look so much taller and bigger, and—my!—so much older!” “Ah, it’s the added wisdom of my college years,” replied Donald with assumed gravity. “That’s what ages a fellow. It’s the Greek and Latin that you see sticking out all over me that has changed me.” Lissa looked up into the smiling eyes of this big brother and wondered if it was those four years of hard study that had so chiseled and thinned the boyish face of her remembrance. “I suspect that mustache is responsible for some of the change,” she said aloud. “So? Shall I shave it off? It’s an outgrowth of _calculus_.” “No, you’re all right as you are. I’m not sure but you’re improved.” “O, that morsel of flattery is sweet, at last, and I’ve been fishing for it so long,” said Donald, with an expansive sigh. “I rather expected you to say at once, ‘how much handsomer you’ve grown!’” “I am very glad I did not say it,” said Lissa, with a grimace. “But I see mamma coming. Excuse me, Donald, I must run to meet her!” and Lissa, with all the abandon of a school-girl, ran down the path to meet the stately mother, whose tears were ready to mingle with those of her beloved child. And when, a few moments later, Lissa came in clinging fondly to the maternal arm, the crimson flush of excited pleasure in her cheeks, the intervening years seemed to have been stricken out and one saw but the girl of sixteen who so trustingly gave her future into Nathan’s care and bade good-by to Donald in his Iowa home. But there is little Lucy to be shown to grandma, and kissed and commented upon, and the tea is cold, and the cakes in danger of being spoiled before Lissa is recalled to her duties as hostess.