“This house is too big to fit anything but an orphan asylum,” said Max, with a wave toward the brick walls now heavily vine-clad with the tender green leafage of May.  “It’s in bad shape, from chimneys to cellar.  Just the same, I’ve a sister who is wild to live here.”

“Yet you are the one who comes out to look over the place?  Perhaps you have a sort of sneaking fondness for it, after all!”

“My sister would come if she could.  She’s in the hospital with typhoid,” explained Max, wondering, as he did so, how he came to be giving details like these in his first conversation with a stranger.  He really liked the look of the fellow extraordinarily well.

“This will be a great place for her to grow strong in, by and by,” suggested the other, his tone indicating his sympathy with the situation.  “The pine grove, in June, will be better than a sanatorium.”

Max shook his head.  “It’s not practical for us to think of living here.  Of course we can bring her out for a day at a time.”

“You might put up a tent in the grove.  Nothing like out-doors for convalescents—­and for well people.  Well, Mr. Lane, thank you immensely for letting me feel free of the grove—­until you come to live.  I am fairly sure you will come to live here some day.  It’s an irresistible old place.”

He took his leave with a pleasant grace of manner which, in spite of the rough old suit and flannel shirt, spoke of training in other places than pine groves.

When he had gone off among the pines toward the hedge, which lay between the grove and the little white cottage on the side toward Wybury, Max rejoined Josephine.  “He looked a pretty good sort, didn’t he?  If anybody did live here, he’d be an interesting neighbour.  I hardly knew there was a house there, did you?”

“Oh, yes, I saw it as we came by.  It had been freshly painted white, and I noticed how pleasant it looked.  It’s a tiny house.  Unless his mother is smaller than he is, it certainly must be a tight fit.”

“She’s probably about the size of a pint pot.  Mothers of strapping fellows like that usually are.”

“He wasn’t any taller than you.”

“Wasn’t he?  I thought he was a giant.  He’d outweigh me by fifty pounds.”

Josephine glanced at him.  It struck her that Max, never of stalwart build, looked paler and thinner than usual.  There was a slight stoop in his shoulders.  She recalled the straight set of those belonging to the strange young man.

“Max,” she asked, quite suddenly, “how much light do you have in your office?”

“Floods of it,” replied Max, promptly.  “I have to wear a shade sometimes.”

“Daylight?”

“Bless your soul, no!  What do you think a ground-floor banking house gets, between a lot of ten-story buildings?  Electrics, of course, are the only things possible.”

“Then you don’t have the daylight at all?”

“I have plenty of light to work by.”