"You've come for a week, I hope," exclaimed her uncle, kissing her.
"Oh, I shall be here several times in the course of the week, and I shall stay now overnight. But a whole week away from my work! Ah! Uncle Robert, you're a good business man, to suggest such a thing!" And, seating herself on the arm of Mr. Barlow's chair, Julia shook her finger playfully in his face.
"When do you have your house-warming?" asked Agnes, taking up the bit of sewing that she had dropped on Julia's entrance.
"We are not to have a house-warming, but later we shall invite you one by one, or perhaps two by two, to see the house."
"I suppose you've taken out all the good furniture, and in a certain way the Du Launy Mansion must be greatly changed."
"Don't speak so sadly, Aunt Anna; it is changed, and yet it is not changed. But I did not know that you were attached to the old house?"
"Hardly attached, Julia, for I was there only once, when I called on Madame Du Launy the year before her death. But in its style of architecture and its furnishings it seemed so completely an old-time house that I regret that it has had to be changed into an institution."
"Oh, no, please, Aunt Anna, not an institution; anything but that. Why, we mean to make it a real home, so that girls who haven't homes of their own will feel perfectly happy. Of course we have had to make some changes in the house itself, and remove some of the furniture, but when you visit us you will see that it is far removed from an institution."
"How many nationalities have you now, Julia? You had a dozen or two waiting admittance when you were last here, had you not?"
"There are to be only ten girls in the home, and there are still some vacancies. Indeed you are a tease, Uncle Robert."