[Original]
CHAPTER XVI. RALPH AT HOME.
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OME at last! And when that longing mother took her boy in her arms once more, and looked long and earnestly into his weary face, she saw only the boyish Ralph, whom sickness could not change; he was to her the same lad who had left his home with strong hopes and sunny smile. True, he was older and more careworn looking, but the honest look of his childhood shone from his eyes, and the same truthful, frank expression was on his features.
Ralph, as he rode up from the depot, with his friends, the Boneels, looked around at the old familiar place with eagerness. He expected to find everything changed—he had been absent so long, that to him it seemed as though the landscape, even, must have taken on new features, or at least changed its old. But there was the same gentle slope in front of the door, the same trees in the fields beyond, the same sunny knoll where he had played when a little boy. Oh, how long ago that seemed to him, now, when he reviewed the experiences of the past four years! Al and his father would not enter the house, though cordially invited to do so; they did not wish to intrude upon the sacredness of the first meeting with his mother.