Her meetings with Evie were more inevitable, and required greater self-repression.  She was so used to the part of elder sister, with whom all confidences are discussed, that she found it difficult not to speak her heart out frankly.

“I heard he had been to see you and Popsey Wayne, and told you,” Evie said, with her pretty nose just peeping above the bedclothes, at midday, on a morning later in the week.  It was the day after Evie’s first large dance, and she had been sleeping late.  Miriam sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing stray golden tendrils off the flushed, happy little face.

“He did come,” Miriam admitted.  “Mr. Wayne made no objections.  I can’t say he was glad.  You wouldn’t expect us to be that, dear, would you?”

“I expect you to like him.  It isn’t committing you to much to say that.  But you seem so—­so every which way about him.”

“I’m not every which way about him.  I can’t say that I’m any way at all.  Yes, I do like him—­after a fashion.  If I make reserves, it’s because I’m not sure that I think him good enough for my little Evie.”

“He’s a great deal too good!” Evie exclaimed, rapturously.  “Oh, Miriam, if you only knew how fond I am of him!  I’d die for him—­I truly believe I would—­almost!  Oh, it was so stupid last night without him!  All these boys seem such pigeons beside him.  I’m sorry now we’re not going to announce the engagement at once.  I certainly sha’n’t change my mind—­and it would be such fun to be able to say I was engaged before coming out.”

“Twice before coming out.”

“Oh, well, I only count it once, do you see?  Billy’s such a goose.  You should have seen him last night when I forgot two of my dances with him—­on purpose.  He’s really getting to dislike me; so that I shall soon be able to—­to show him.”

“I wouldn’t be in a hurry about that, dear.  There’s lots of time.  As you said the other day, it’s no use hurting his feelings—­”

Evie sat up suddenly in bed, and looked suspicious.

“So you’re taking that stand.  Now I know you don’t like him.  You’ve got something against him, though I can’t for the life of me imagine what it can be, when you never laid eyes on him till a few days ago.  Well, I’m not going to change, do you see?  You may as well make up your mind to that at once.  And it will be Billy or no Billy.”

Nearer than that Miriam could not approach the subject through fear of doing more harm than good.  At the end of a week Ford found her at home, chiefly because she felt it time he should.  She secured again the afternoon-call atmosphere; but she noticed that he carried a small packet—­a large, brownish-yellow envelope, strapped with rubber bands—­which he kept in his hand.  She was struck by the greater ease of his entry, and by the renewal of that sense of comradeship which had marked his bearing toward her in the old days in the cabin.  The small comedy of introductory commonplace went off smoothly.