Mrs. Grey sprang to meet her boys, holding out both hands, her face radiating pleasure as brightly as the girls' faces did. Cousin Charlotte pressed close behind her—it was not strange that the Rutherford boys counted the hours from Monday to Friday that lay between them and their glad home-coming.
"My but it's good to get here!" ejaculated Bruce, stretching his long legs to the fire, but looking at Rob whose warm red-brown hair, flashing eyes and crimson cheeks were every whit as heartening to look upon as were the flames licking up through the great logs.
"There's no place like it—John Howard Paine was perfectly right," said Basil with quiet conviction, watching Wythie's soft hands as they cut generous slices from the afternoon's cake baking and added the cookies the tall boys had "loved from their first meeting," as Bartlemy said.
"There is no news, except that we have Polly Flinders here for a visit with no end in sight; her father is paralysed and has squandered all his money in worthless stocks," Prue was saying, in reply to Bartlemy's demand for news.
"Whew! As though that weren't news enough!" Bruce cried, sitting erect. "Fancy Flinders squandering! And paralysed, is he? The poor old fellow! He has been rather decent since your father died."
"Very decent," assented Rob. "And Hester was up, and brought her cousin Lester Baldwin, fresh from Japan. He is just like her father. And Hessie has some new longing, which I did not quite get at; something to do with helping incurable cripple children in the tenements," she continued.
"That sounds like the most interesting and sensible scheme she has had yet," said Bruce heartily. "But this cousin—You like Mr. Baldwin; did you say the Japaned cousin was like him?" And Bruce scowled melodramatically.
"Precisely," said Rob. "Only nicer."
"Come up to our other house, Basil," said Bruce. "I won't linger here!"