I tell you she's a team." Andy was warming up with his subject, and finding Ethelyn a good listener, he continued: "I want you to like her, and I b'lieve you orter, for if it hadn't been for her this room wouldn't of been fixed up as 'tis.

Melinda coaxed mother to buy the carpet, and the curtings, and to put your bed in there.

Why, that was the meal room, where you be, and we used to keep beans there, too; but Melinda stuck to it till mother moved the chest and the bags, and then we got some paint, and me and the boys and Melinda painted, and worked, hopin' all the time that you'd be pleased, as I guess you be.

We wanted to have you like us." And simple-hearted Andy drew near to Ethelyn, who was softened more by what he said than she could have been by her husband's most urgent appeal.

The thought of the people to whom she had been so cold, and even rude, working and planning for her comfort, touched a very tender chord, and had Richard then proffered his request for her to go down, it is very possible she might have done so; but it was too late now, and after Andy left her she lay pondering what he had said and listening to the sound of voices which came up to her from the parlor directly beneath her room where James, and John, and Andy, and the mother, with Melinda, and Eunice, were talking to Richard, who was conscious of a greater feeling of content, sitting there in their midst again, than he had known in many a day.