“Lena, has our trunk come from the hotel?” Father asked.
“Yessir, I just been sneaking it in the back way. Welcome home, mum,” said the maid, and shut the door—from the other side.
Mother suddenly crumpled, burrowed her head against Father’s shoulder and sobbed: “This is ours? Our own? Now?”
“Yes, Mother, it sure am ours.” Father still tried to speak airily, but in his voice were passion and a grave happiness. “It’s ours—yours! And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn’t tell you how well we’re doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn’t know us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!”
“And I have a maid, too!” marveled Mother.
“Yes, and a garden if you want to keep busy outdoors. And a phonograph with nineteen records, musical and comic, by Jiminy!”
To prove which he darted back into the living-room, started “Molly Magee, My Girl,” and to its cheerful strains he danced a fantastic jig, while the maid stared from the dining-room, and Mother, at the bedroom door, wept undisguisedly, murmuring, “Oh, my boy, my boy, that planned it all to surprise me!”