The swallows are gone: the summer is done: it is October.

The year knows that I am in a hurry, and is hasting with its shortened days--each day marked by the loss of something fair--toward the glad Christmas-time--Christmas that will bring me back my Roger--that will set him again at the foot of his table--that will give me again the sound of his foot on the stairs, the smile in his fond gray eyes.

So I thought yesterday, and to-day I have heard from him; heard that though he is greatly loath to tell me so, yet he cannot be back by Christmas; that I must hear the joy-bells ring, and see the merry Christmas cheer _alone_.

It is true that he earnestly and insistantly begs of me to gather all my people, father, mother, boys, girls, around me.

But, after all, what are father, mother, boys, girls, to me?
Father never _was_ any thing, I will do myself that justice, but at this moment of sore disappointment as I lean my forehead on the letter outspread on the table before me, and dim its sentences with tears, I _belittle_ even the boys.