Rose MacLeod

								

"It's Billy Stark," she said.
"Of course it is," triumphed the other old lady. "Billy Stark come back
from foreign parts as good as new. Now let's sit down and talk it over."
They drew their chairs together, and, smiles and glances mingling, went
back over the course of the years, first with a leap to the keen, bright
time when they were in school together. The type of that page was
clear-cut and vivid. There were years they skipped then, and finally
they came to the present, and Billy said,--
"You have two grandsons?"
"Yes. One lives with me. The other is coming home to-morrow. He's the
painter."
"Engaged to Electra," added Madam Fulton. "Did you know that? They are
to be married this summer. Then I suppose he'll go back to Paris and
she'll go with him."
Mrs. Grant was looking at her with a grave attention.
"We hope not," she said, "Osmond and I. Osmond hopes Peter will settle
here and do some work. He thinks it will be best for him."
"There's no difficulty about his getting it," said Billy. "I saw his
portrait of Mrs. Rhys. That was amazing."
The grandmother nodded, in a quiet pleasure.
"They said so," she returned.
"It will do everything for him."
"It has done everything. Osmond says he has only to sit down now and
paint. But he thinks it will be best for him to do it here--at least for
a time."
"How in the world can Osmond tell before he sees him?" objected Madam
Fulton. "You haven't set eyes on Peter for five years. He may be
Parisian to the backbone. You wouldn't want to tie him by the leg over
here."
"So Osmond says. But he hopes he won't want to go back."
"I can tell him one thing," said the other old lady; "he'd better make
up his mind to some big centre, Paris or New York, or he won't get
Electra. Electra knows what she wants, and it isn't seclusion. She is
going to be the wife of a celebrated painter, and she'll insist on the
perquisites. I know Electra."
Mrs. Grant smiled in deprecation; but Stark had a habit of intuitive
leaps, and he judged that she also knew Electra. His mind wandered a
little, as his eyes ran over the nearer features of the place. It hardly
suggested wealth: only comfort and beauty, the grace that comes of long
devotion, the loving eye, the practiced hand. Somebody's heart had been
put into it. This was the labor that was not hired. He had a strong
curiosity to see Osmond, and yet he could not ask for him because Madam
Fulton had once written him some queer tale of the man's sleeping in the
woods, in a house of his own building, and living the wild life his body
needed. One thing he learned now: Osmond's name was never out of his
grandmother's mouth. She quoted his decisions as if they stood for
ultimate wisdom. His ways were good and lovely to her.
The forenoon hour went by, and finally Madam Fulton remembered.
"Bless me!" she said. "It's luncheon time. Come, Billy."
The road was brighter now under the mounting sun. Madam Fulton was a