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When October had passed and the grey November days came, the glory of Miss Hannah’s garden was over. She was very lonely without her flowers. She missed them more this year than ever. On fine days she paced up and down the walks and looked sadly at the drooping, unsightly stalks and vines. She was there one afternoon when the northeast wind was up and doing, whipping the gulf waters into whitecaps and whistling up the inlet and around the grey eaves. Miss Hannah was mournfully patting a frosted chrysanthemum under its golden chin when she saw a man limping slowly down the lane.

“Now, who can that be?” she murmured. “It isn’t any Prospect man, for there’s nobody lame around here.”

She went to the garden gate to meet him. He came haltingly up the slope and paused before her, gazing at her wistfully. He looked old and bent and broken, and his clothes were poor and worn. Who was he? Miss Hannah felt that she ought to know him, and her memory went groping back amongst all her recollections. Yet she could think of nobody but her father, who had died fifteen years before.

“Don’t ye know me, Hannah?” said the man wistfully. “Have I changed so much as all that?”

“Ralph!”

It was between a cry and a laugh. Miss Hannah flew through the gate and caught him in her arms. “Ralph, my own dear brother! Oh, I always knew you’d come back. If you knew how I’ve looked forward to this day!” She was both laughing and crying now. Her face shone with a soft gladness. Ralph Walworth shook his head sadly.

“It’s a poor wreck of a man I am come back to you, Hannah,” he said. “I’ve never accomplished anything and my health’s broken and I’m a cripple as ye see. For a time I thought I’d never show my face back here, such a failure as I be, but the longing to see you got too strong. It’s naught but a wreck I am, Hannah.”

“You’re my own dear brother,” cried Miss Hannah. “Do you think I care how poor you are? And if your health is poor I’m the one to nurse you up, who else than your only sister, I’d like to know! Come right in. You’re shivering in this wind. I’ll mix you a good hot currant drink. I knew them black currants didn’t bear so plentiful for nothing last summer. Oh, this is a good day and no mistake!”

In twenty-four hours’ time everybody in Prospect knew that Ralph Walworth had come home, crippled and poor. Jacob Delancey shook his head as he drove away from the station with Ralph’s shabby little trunk standing on end in his buggy. The station master had asked him to take it down to Miss Hannah’s, and Jacob did not fancy the errand. He was afraid Miss Hannah would be in a bad way and he did not know what to say to her.

She was in her garden, covering her pansies with seaweed, when he drove up, and she came to the garden gate to meet him, all smiles.

“So you’ve brought Ralph’s trunk, Mr. Delancey. Now, that was real good of you. He was going over to the station to see about it himself, but he had such a cold I persuaded him to wait till tomorrow. He’s lying down asleep now. He’s just real tired. He brought this seaweed up from the shore for me this morning and it played him out. He ain’t strong. But didn’t I tell you he was coming back soon? You only laughed at me, but I knew.”

“He isn’t very rich, though,” said Jacob jokingly. He was relieved to find that Miss Hannah did not seem to be worrying over this.

“That doesn’t matter,” cried Miss Hannah. “Why, he’s my brother! Isn’t that enough? I’m rich if he isn’t, rich in love and happiness. And I’m better pleased in a way than if he had come back rich. He might have wanted to take me away or build a fine house, and I’m too old to be making changes. And then he wouldn’t have needed me. I’d have been of no use to him. As it is, it’s just me he needs to look after him and coddle him. Oh, it’s fine to have somebody to do things for, somebody that belongs to you. I was just dreading the loneliness of the winter, and now it’s going to be such a happy winter. I declare last night Ralph and I sat up till morning talking over everything. He’s had a hard life of it. Bad luck and illness right along. And last winter in the lumber woods he got his leg broke. But now he’s come home and we’re never going to be parted again as long as we live. I could sing for joy, Jacob.”

“Oh, sure,” assented Jacob cordially. He felt a little dazed. Miss Hannah’s nimble change of base was hard for him to follow, and he had an injured sense of having wasted a great deal of commiseration on her when she didn’t need it at all. “Only I kind of thought, we all thought, you had such plans.”

“Well, they served their turn,” interrupted Miss Hannah briskly. “They amused me and kept me interested till something real would come in their place. If I’d had to carry them out I dare say they’d have bothered me a lot. Things are more comfortable as they are. I’m happy as a bird, Jacob.”

“Oh, sure,” said Jacob. He pondered the business deeply all the way back home, but could make nothing of it.

“But I ain’t obliged to,” he concluded sensibly. “Miss Hannah’s satisfied and happy and it’s nobody else’s concern. However, I call it a curious thing.”