"Bella!" he cried.
She flashed about, rushed at him, and for the first time since "Going to Siberia" he felt the entwining arms. He suffered the dashing embrace, then, freeing himself, saw her hair dark under her black hat, and that she had grown in eighteen months, and he heard—
"Oh, Cousin Antony, how long you have been coming home! I have been waiting for your engine to come
under the window, but I didn't see you. How did you get here without my seeing you?"
If the sky had opened and shown him the vision of his own mother he could not have been more overwhelmed with surprise.
"Where did you come from, Bella? Who is with you?"
She took her hat off, dropped it easily on the floor, and he saw that her hair was braided in a great braid. She sat on the ledge of the open window and swung her feet. Her skirts had been lengthened, but she was still a little girl. The charming affectionate eyes beamed on him.
"But you are like anybody else, Cousin Antony, to-day. When I saw you in your flannel shirt I thought you were a fireman."
At the remembrance of when she had seen him, a look of distress crossed her mobile face. She burst out crying, sprang up and ran to him.
"Oh, Cousin Antony, I want him so, my little brother, my little playmate."