going home.

This was August; her last trip home had been between Christmas and the
New Year. She had sent a box from Germany at Easter, ties for the
boys, silk scarves for Rebecca, books for Dad; and she had written
Mother for her birthday in June, and enclosed an exquisite bit of lace
in the letter; but although Victoria's illness had brought her to
America nearly three months ago, it had somehow been impossible, she
wrote them, to come home until now. Margaret had paid a great deal for
the lace, as a sort of salve for her conscience,--not that Mother
would ever wear it!

Here was Weston. Weston looking its very ugliest in the level pitiless
rays of the afternoon sun. The town, like most of its inhabitants, was
wilted and grimed after the burden and heat of the long summer day.
Margaret carried her heavy suit-case slowly up Main Street. Shop
windows were spotted and dusty, and shopkeepers, standing idle in
their doorways, looked spotted and dusty too. A cloud of flies fought
and surged about the closely guarded door of the butcher shop; a
delivery cart was at the curb, the discouraged horse switching an
ineffectual tail.

As Margaret passed this cart, a tall boy of fourteen came out of the
shop with a bang of the wire-netting door, and slid a basket into the
back of the cart.

"Teddy!" said Margaret, irritation evident in her voice, in spite
of herself.

"Hello, Mark!" said her brother, delightedly. "Say, great to see you!