“How do you do, my dears?” said Aunt Sarah, majestically. “I was surprised to find no one at the station when I arrived. I am not accustomed to the care of my own baggage. Barbara, how sallow you are! Don’t set my trunk down there, sir; my fee to you includes payment for carrying it upstairs. Archie, let the dressing-case alone; I don’t want to have to speak to you about it again! I suppose I am to have the east room, as usual. I hope the morning light won’t wake me up at day-break.” “The same old Great Sahara!” whispered Jack, appearing in the hall to shoulder the luggage. “Age cannot wither, or custom stale her infinite arrive-ity. If I should hear that voice in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, I should say, ’Tis she! ’Tis she!” It was true that the three years that had passed since aunt and niece had met had done little to change Aunt Sarah. At the table that noon, Barbara, who had sacrificed her vegetarian theories to the comfort of her visitors, hospitably inquired about the result:— “How is your steak, Aunt Sarah?” Mrs. Bossall plied her knife vigorously for a moment, then replied to her niece’s question with a single word:— “Tough!” Barbara’s housekeeping, Jack’s idleness, Gassy’s disposition, David’s dreaminess, and the Kid’s table-manners were all criticised with impartiality. Even the Vegetable Man’s daughter was not spared. “If that girl were working for _me_, she wouldn’t sit up with her young man until half-past ten o’clock,” she announced, on the second morning after her arrival. She commented on the hardness of her bed, the crack in her window, the quality of her food; Barbara’s theories, the doctor’s weakness for charity cases, the lack of economy in the household, and the extravagance of sanitarium life, all came in for her condemnation. Barbara’s temper was held by a single airy thread, that threatened daily to snap, and was kept in place only by exertion of much will-power, and the comforting thought that Aunt Sarah’s visit could not last forever. “Edward’s children” had inherited some of the most striking of their grandmother’s characteristics. Moreover, added to her aggressiveness and her domineering qualities, they possessed a fertility of resource and an ingenuity for mischief that filled the Kid with envy, Barbara with horror, and Jack with amusement.