“Come in by the fire and dry your hair,” he commanded.

She shook her head and drew away her hand.  “No, I’ll run up and dry everything at once.”

“You won’t be all the evening about it?” he questioned, with suspicion, for her attitude suggested flight.

“How can I tell?” The old mischief looked out of her eyes.

He took a step toward her.  “Come and get the first wet off by the fire,” he urged.

But, laughing, she fled up the stairs.

“I didn’t know he was such a distinguished-looking person,” she was owning to herself as she ran along the upper hall.  “Why, he’s grown so much heavier and handsomer I’m actually afraid of him—­it doesn’t seem like the same Jarvis Burnside I’ve known so long.  He’s—­he’s—­what Dorothy Chase would call stunning!  I never supposed that farming would have that effect on anybody.”

Then she rushed into her own room to find it in spotless order, with evidences of Joanna’s recent presence in a brisk little fire burning in the small bedroom fireplace, the freshest of appointments everywhere, and a trimly bright lamp upon the old cherry dressing-table which had come from New Hampshire among Uncle Timothy’s furniture.

“My trunk isn’t here—­what in the world shall I put on?” was her first anxiety.  She opened the door of her closet, to find all her last summer’s frocks newly “done up” and hanging there in inviting daintiness.  She caught at the lilac muslin, now faded by many washings into a mere tint, but looking so like home and good times that it seemed the fitting thing to don, in the absence of her heavier dresses, even upon an April night.

A half-hour later, her hair crisply dried by the fire and curling blithely from its recent bath, herself sweet with the soap-and-water and clean-clothes freshness which is the only fragrance worth cultivating, Sally stole on tiptoe to the top of the stairs and peeped down.  She beheld Jarvis pacing up and down the hall, and as she looked saw him take his watch out and scan its face as if he had an appointment to keep.  She stood still, her pulses beating rather quickly.  This was not exactly the sort of home-coming she had planned, this reception by one person.  But it was nearly ten o’clock already, she had managed to consume so much time upstairs.  Also, upon Joanna’s return to her room to inquire if there were anything else she wanted, the young mistress of the house had imperatively commanded the presence in the living-room of the middle-aged housekeeper until such time as Max and the boys should arrive.  Joanna, with her neat black dress and smooth hair, was certainly fitted in appearance for the duties of duenna, and Sally had felt no hesitation whatever in requiring her to assume that role.

So Joanna now waited in the living-room—­rather reluctantly, it must be admitted, for it seemed to her that this was carrying chaperonage unnecessarily far.  But Jarvis was in the hall, and the door had been closed between.  Sally did not realize this latter fact until she had almost reached the bottom of the stairs, where Jarvis, the moment that he had caught sight of her, had advanced to meet her.  She looked at the door with a startled expression.  It was ordinarily kept open, except in very cold weather.