The young girl started from her seat.

In another minute Hazel saw them together in the doorway.

There was a blush and a smile, and an eager brightness in the face, and a quick speaking thanks, that one could read without hearing, from the parted lips, on the one side, and the quiet, unflutterable gray bonnet calmly horizontal on the other; and then the door was shut, and Rachel Froke was crossing the damp pavement again.

“I’m so glad Aspen Street is narrow!” said Hazel.  “I should hate to be way off out of sight of people.  What did you say to her, Mrs. Froke?” she asked, as the Friend reentered.  Hazel could by no means take the awful liberty of “Rachel.”

“I said the young girl, Hazel Ripwinkley, being from the country, knew how good flowers were to strangers in the town, and that she thought they might be strange, and might like some.”

Hazel flushed all up.  At that same instant, a gentle nod and smile came across from window to window, and she flushed more, till the tears sprung with the shy, glad excitement, as she returned it and then shrunk away.

“And she said, ‘Thank her, with Dorris Kincaid’s love,’” proceeded Rachel Froke.

“O, mother!” exclaimed Hazel.  “And you did it all, right off so, Mrs. Froke.  I don’t see how grown up people dare, and know how!”

Up the stairs ran quick feet in little clattering heeled boots.  Desire Ledwith, with a purple waterproof on, came in.

“I couldn’t stay at home to-day,” she said, “I wanted to be where it was all-togetherish.  It never is at our house.  Now it’s set up, they don’t do anything with it.”

“That’s because it ’looks’—­so elegant,” said Hazel, catching herself up in dismay.

“It’s because it’s the crust, I think,” said Desire.  “Puff paste, like an oyster patty; and they haven’t got anything cooked yet for the middle.  I wonder when they will.  I had a call yesterday, all to myself,” she went on, with a sudden change of tone and topic.  “Agatha was hopping and I wouldn’t tell her what I said, or how I behaved.  That new parlor girl of ours thinks we’re all or any of us ‘Miss Ledwith,’ mamma included, and so she let him in.  He had on lavender pantaloons and a waxed moustache.”

“The rain is just pouring down!” said Diana, at the garden window.

“Yes; I’m caught.  That’s what I meant,” said Desire.  “You’ve got to keep me all day, now.  How will you get home, Mrs. Froke?  Or won’t you have to stay, too?”

“Thee may call me Rachel, Desire Ledwith, if thee pleases.  I like it better.  I am no mistress.  And for getting home, it is but just round the corner.  But there is no need yet.  I came for an hour, to sit here with friend Frances.  And my hour is not yet up.”

“I’m glad of that, for there is something I want you to tell me.  I haven’t quite got at it myself, yet; so as to ask, I mean.  Wait a minute!” And she put her elbows up on her knees, and held her thumbs against her ears, and her fingers across her forehead; sitting squarely opposite the window to which she had drawn up her chair beside Diane, and looking intently at the driving streams that rushed and ran down against the glass.