With Mrs.Dr.Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles.

Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now.

Possibly they could find what they needed in Chicago; if not, they could order from Boston.
Richard, who overheard this remark, wondered what it meant, for he had not the most remote idea of separating himself from his mother.

She was very essential to his happiness; and he was hardly willing to confess to himself how much during the last summer he had missed her.

She had a way of petting him and deferring to his judgment and making him feel that Richard Markham was a very nice kind of man, far different from Ethelyn's criticisms, which had sometimes led him seriously to inquire whether he were a fool or not.