“Have you come to see me or Aunt Jane?” asks she; “because Aunt Jane is out—­I’m glad to say"—­this last pianissimo.

“To see you,” says the professor, absently.  He is thinking!  He has taken her hand, and held it, and dropped it again, all in a state of high bewilderment.

“Is this the big, strong, noisy girl of his imaginings?  The bouncing creature with untidy hair, and her clothes pitchforked on to her?”

“Well—­I hoped so,” says she, a little wistfully as it seems to him, every trace of late sauciness now gone, and with it the sudden shyness.  After many days the professor grows accustomed to these sudden transitions that are so puzzling yet so enchanting, these rapid, inconsequent, but always lovely changes

    “From grave to gay, from lively to severe.”

“Won’t you sit down?” says his small hostess, gently, touching a chair near her with her slim fingers.

“Thank you,” says the professor, and then stops short.

“You are——­”

“Your ward,” says she, ever so gently still, yet emphatically.  It is plain that she is now on her very best behavior.  She smiles up at him in a very encouraging way.  “And you are my guardian, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” says the professor, without enthusiasm.  He has seated himself, not on the chair she has pointed out to him, but on a very distant lounge.  He is conscious of a feeling of growing terror.  This lovely child has created it, yet why, or how?  Was ever guardian mastered by a ward before?  A desire to escape is filling him, but he has got to do his duty to his dead friend, and this is part of it.

He has retired to the far-off lounge with a view to doing it as distantly as possible, but even this poor subterfuge fails him.  Miss Wynter, picking up a milking-stool, advances leisurely towards him, and seating herself upon it just in front of him, crosses her hands over her knees and looks expectantly up at him with a charming smile.

“Now we can have a good talk,” says she.

CHAPTER III.

    “And if you dreamed how a friend’s smile
    And nearness soothe a heart that’s sore,
    You might be moved to stay awhile
    Before my door.”

“About?” begins the professor, and stammers, and ceases.

“Everything,” says she, with a little nod.  “It is impossible to talk to Aunt Jane.  She doesn’t talk, she only argues, and always wrongly.  But you are different.  I can see that.  Now tell me,”—­she leans even more forward and looks intently at the professor, her pretty brows wrinkled as if with extreme and troublous thought—­“What are the duties of a guardian?”

“Eh?” says the professor.  He moves his glasses up to his forehead and then pulls them down again.  Did ever anxious student ask him question so difficult of answer as this one—­that this small maiden has propounded?