'I am a citizen of Gloria, aunt.'
'You who were so good to them.'
'Well, as to my being good to them, there are two to tell that tale. The gentlemen of the Congress don't put a high price upon my goodness, I fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my good; that was because I was a child. The crowd is always a child.'
They had come to the porch by this time, and had stopped short at the threshold. The little porch was draped in flowers and foliage, and looked very pretty.
'You were always a good child,' said the old lady affectionately.
Ericson looked down at her rather wistfully.
'Do you think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying off into another hemisphere, only to be sent back at last like a bad penny.'
'So you would,' said the old lady, very softly, more as if she were speaking to herself than to him. 'So you would if——'
She did not finish her sentence. But her nephew, who knew and understood, repeated the last word.
'If,' he said, and he, too, sighed.