A tall, soldierly fellow came up the street, looked, hesitated, opened the gate softly, and glanced down at the tulips. He was quite imposing as to figure, and his complexion was bronzed, the ends of his brown hair rather long and curling. He was in citizen clothes, and Doris wondered why she should think of Lieutenant Hawthorne. She had expected Cary in all the glory of a naval uniform—a slim, fair, boyish person with a light springy walk. It never could be Cary!
"Oh, Uncle Win, quick!" as the step sounded on the porch. "It is—someone——" She was so little certain she could not utter a name.
Uncle Winthrop went out, opened the door, and his son put his arms about the father's neck. If there had been need of words neither could have uttered them for many minutes.
When Miss Recompense cleaned house a week or two before the piano had been moved into the parlor. The door stood open so that it could have the warmth of the hall fire. The two entered it when they had found their voices.
"It is Cary," thought Doris with a sense of disappointment, though why she could not have told.
Half an hour afterward they came out to the study.
"Oh, Doris!" Cary cried, "how you have changed and grown. I shouldn't have known you! I've been carrying about with me the remembrance of a little girl. In my mind you have been no taller, no older, and yet I might have known—why, we shall have to get acquainted all over again."
Doris blushed. "I am sure I have not changed as much as you. I did not think it could be you."
"Someone at Annapolis before we went out designated me as 'That consumptive-looking young fellow.' But I have grown strong and hearty, and no doubt I shall come to fourscore. I do not mean that it shall be all labor and sorrow, either."
Then Cary made the rounds of the house. Miss Recompense was as much amazed as Doris had been. Cato and Dinah were overjoyed. He had hardly dared dream that nothing would be changed, that more than the old love would be given back. He had gone away a boy, nurtured in the restraints of wise Puritanism that made a lasting mark on New England character; he had come home a man of experience, of deeper thought, of higher understanding and stronger affection. He was proud that he had done his duty as a citizen of the republic, but he knew now that neither naval or military life was to his taste. Henceforth he was to be a son in the old home.