“Everywhere, everywhere, such changes and so fine! Yet it almost grieves me to come home and find it all so changed. But that is wrong. It is the dream of my dead father’s life made blessed reality. So, I am glad after all, and I feel that from somewhere he is looking down on me returning, bidding me take up and carry on the work he planned, that you have organized, and that old Pedro’s gift made possible.
“Ah! here we are! And this is unchanged! This dear old ‘house’ is not one bit different from my memory of it! Home, home, at last?”
As she sprang from the car and sped across the little intervening space which yet remained, there issued from that cottage door a plump old lady, decorated everywhere with strips of flying patchwork, her glasses on top of her old gray head, and a bottle in her hand, which so shakes with delight that the vial falls to the ground and breaks.
“Why, Jess—All that good picry—Jessie, my love, my lamb! Luis! Wun Lung! John, Marty, Ephraim Ma’sh—man alive you needed that medicine, you needed it powerful, and it’s wasted! Never mind, I’ve got more and after supper—Wun Lung, do you dast tell me you come out and left them ‘sally luns’ to scorch? Back into that kitchen and serve up that supper or I’ll cut your pigtail off!”
With this dire and oft-repeated threat the Chinaman disappeared, salaaming and katowing to the last, as he retreated backward and fixed his admiring gaze upon the girl he had known and always loved.
But why seek to describe that joyful homecoming? Those who have home-loving hearts may well imagine it for themselves; and those who have not would not be interested.
But never was there, could there be, a more grateful heart than Jessica Trent’s, as she stood that night before her own old, open window and looked out over that vast estate of which she was to be the chatelaine; while from her lips there rose the humble, happy cry:
“O Thou dear God Who givest all, make me to be worthy of my Inheritance!”
THE CREAM OF JUVENILE FICTION