Nancy he knew by sight, and Nancy in a crimson dress was singing her thankful heart out.  Who was the dark-haired girl standing by her side, the two with arms round each other’s waists,—­his own Olive!  He had always thought her unattractive, but her hair was smoothly braided and her eyes all aglow.  Cyril stood between Gilbert and Mother Carey.  Cyril, he knew, could not carry a tune to save his life, but he seemed to be opening his lips and uttering words all the same.  Where was the timid eye, the “hangdog look,” the shrinking manner, he so disliked in his son?  Great Heavens! the boy laid his hand on Mrs. Carey’s shoulder and beat time there gently with a finger, as if a mother’s shoulder could be used for any nice, necessary sort of purpose.

If he knocked at the door now, he thought, he should interrupt the party; which was seemingly at its height.  He, Henry Lord, Ph.D., certainly had no intention of going in to join it, not with Ossian Popham and Bill Harmon as fellow guests.

He made his way curiously around the outside of the house, looking in at all the windows, and by choosing various positions, seeing as much as he could of the different rooms.  Finally he went up on the little back piazza, attracted by the firelight in the family sitting room.  There was a noble fire, and once, while he was looking, Digby Popham stole quietly in, braced up the logs with a proprietary air, swept up the hearth, replaced the brass wire screen, and stole out again as quickly as possible, so that he might not miss too much of the party.

“They seem to feel pretty much at home,” thought Mr. Lord.

The fire blazed higher and brighter.  It lighted up certain words painted in dark green and gold on the white panel under the mantelpiece.  He pressed his face quite close to the window, thinking that he must be mistaken in seeing such unconnected letters as T-i-b-i, but gradually they looked clearer to him and he read distinctly “Tibi splendet focus.”

“Somebody knows his Horace,” thought Henry Lord, Ph.D., as he stumbled off the piazza. “‘For you the hearth-fire glows,’ I shan’t go in; not with that crew; let them wait; and if it gets too late, somebody else will walk home with the children.”

“For you the hearth-fire glows.”

He picked his way along the side of the house to the front, every window sending out its candle gleam.

“For you the hearth-fire glows.”

From dozens of windows the welcome shone.  Its gleams and sparkles positively pursued him as he turned his face towards the road and his own dark, cheerless house.  Perhaps he had better, on the whole, keep one lamp burning in the lower part after this, to show that the place was inhabited?

“For you the hearth-fire glows.”

He had “bricked up” the fireplace in his study and put an air-tight stove in, because it was simply impossible to feed an open fire and write a book at the same time.  He didn’t know that you could write twice as good a book in half the time with an open fire to help you!  He didn’t know any single one of the myriad aids that can come to you from such cheery, unexpected sources of grace and inspiration!