Free Girl to Come Home To by Grace Livingston Hill

wonderful fruit, and I know they will enjoy it.”
    “No, they are not down yet. I thought they ought to sleep a little while, as long as they seem to want to, now that they are at home and there is no one around to say ‘Thou shalt, and thou shalt not.’ ”
    “That’s nice, Mother. Isn’t it wonderful to have them both home again and have a chance to spoil them just a little? Only, do you know, they somehow don’t spoil. I think that’s a tribute to the way you brought them up. I do hope, perhaps, someday, somebody will think
I’m
a credit to your bringing up, too.”
    “You dear child! Of course they will. Kathie, you have always been a wonderful daughter,” and the mother stepped over and stopped to lay a kiss on the sweet white forehead as Kathie was bending over the table to arrange a great dish of fruit.
    “Look, Mother,
pink
grapefruit, Florida oranges, lovely red apples, and see these luscious yellow bananas. They have sunshine in their skins.”
    “Yes, aren’t they beautiful? I’m so glad you found them. But there, the boys are coming down. They must have been waiting for you to get back. Tell Hetty, won’t you? Tell her she better get the griddle hot. We’re having buckwheats, you know.”
    “Yes, I’ll tell her,” said Kathie happily, and she skipped out to the kitchen. Her mother could hear her eager young voice calling to Hetty, “All ready, Hetty, put the griddle on!”
    Then the brothers barged into the dining room, breathing joyous good mornings, and in the same breath Jeremy cried, “Oh,
boy
! What do I smell? Buckwheat cakes! As I live. Rod, what do you know about that? We’re really home at last and going to have genuine buckwheat cakes. And maple syrup from the row of maples on the meadow lots! Can you beat it?”
    “No, I can’t beat it, brother. I can’t even in my thoughts come up to it. Sometimes on far seas I have lain in sacks and dreamed of buckwheat cakes. I’ve seen the butter melting on their hot brown surfaces, I’ve closed my eyes and tried to think how maple syrup would fall from the old silver cruet and how it would taste as I put the first luscious mouthful in my mouth. I almost thought there was syrup on my lips, and I must be careful not to drop any on my uniform and get myself all sticky.”
    “Oh, Jerry, what a boy you are,” said his smiling mother. “Sometimes I was terribly afraid you would be so grown up when you came home that I wouldn’t feel you were my little boy who left me and sailed away to foreign lands, but you’re just the same, Jerry. There! Sit down and begin. Do you want fruit first and cereal?”
    “Not on yer life, Mom. I want a buckwheat cake the first off the bat, and no kiddin’.”
    And so amid laughter and joking, the morning began, with Rodney not far behind in his appreciation of the buckwheat cakes.
    Though it was three days since that first night that the brothers had arrived, yet it seemed to them all as if they had just come. The long months and years of their separation were still sharply in their minds, and they had to savor every moment of their presence together again. Oh how they had feared and dreaded that home might be sorrowful, might be filled with disappointment, worry for fear of disablement or incurable illness, or a burden of sorrow and inability for their dear ones. That very morning as the loving mother had knelt to pray for the opening of the day, she had thanked the Lord fervently that He had brought her dear ones home safely, not lame nor blind nor stricken with some fatal illness. And so she had gone down to meet the day with her heart filled with wonder and her face shining with joy and the glory of the Lord. And those boys saw the glory and rejoiced in it.
    The brothers were just beginning to feel really at home again, ready to kid each other and feel thoroughly as if they had not been away at all. Their mother was beginning to hold her breath every time the telephone rang lest it might be some new