"He's come."
There was the rattle of wheels, at all events, in the quiet side street. The two girls rushed to the door and down to the gate. A carriage stopped. Their father got out with his usual air of weary haste. He was saying something disparaging of that Europe he had never seen, applauding his nephew's return to his native land. Val, her grandmother's warning fresh in mind, caught up the lantern and held it high above her head, slanted slightly, so as to catch within the radius of light the tall, slight figure that followed her father so lightly up the broken steps.
"Your own country has need of you," John Gano was winding up; "she is waiting for just such a man."
He paused under the red-bud tree.
Val still stood with the lantern conscientiously held up, lost for that first moment in her own absorbing impressions. Young Gano looked at her with quick realization of the eager, buoyant attitude, the uplifted face on which the strong light streamed, the wide, earnest outlook of eyes with so much more in them of question than of welcome, they might have been accustomed to sweeping far horizons from the watch-towers of the world.
An infinitesimal pause, and then:
"How do you do, America?" he said, smiling, and took his cousin's hand.
Val felt instantly he was laughing at her for a kind of travesty of Liberty Enlightening the World. She drew back quickly, lowering the lantern.
"I am Val," she said, "and this is Emmie."