Mr. Kirkbright smiled.

“Yes, I see where you are,” he said, “I had arrived at precisely the same point myself.  But the ‘right people at the other end?’ Who should they be?  Who shall send me my villagers,—­my workers?  Who shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at the source?”

“Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp,” Desire repeated, promptly.

“And yourself?”

“Yes; I and Hazel, all we can.  We help them.  And now there will be Miss Argenter.  As Hazel said,—­’We all of us know the Muffin-man.’  How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with us!  Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the Muffin-man literally, except what I can guess of him by your application,” said Mr. Kirkbright, laughing.  “I’ve no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good.”

“You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out.  Hazel and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of proprietorship; ’and quite proper, I’m sure’—­Why, where are Miss Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?”

Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her “quite proper” quotation.

“If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside the Muffin-man,” said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help her up a steep, slippery place.

Desire foolishly blushed.  She knew it, and knew that her hat did not defend her in the least.  She could not take it back now; she had invited him.  But what would he think of her blushing about it?

“You can learn what we all learn.  I am only a scholar,” she said, shortly.  And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do with it.  She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, at she hardly knew what.  She was provoked with herself, for letting the shadow of such things touch her.  She hurried on, up the rough bank, before Mr. Kirkbright.  When she reached the top, she turned round and faced him; this time with a determinedly cool cheek.

“I don’t know why I said that.  I did not suppose you thought you could learn anything of me,” she said.  “I was confused to think I had asked you in that offhand way to my house.  I have not been very long used to being the head of a house.”

She smiled one of those bits of smiles of hers; a mere relaxation of the lips that showed the white tips of her front teeth and just indicated the peculiar, pretty curve with which the others were set behind them; feeling reassured and reinstated in her own self-respect by her explanation.  Then, without letting him answer, she turned swiftly round again, and sprang up the rugged stairway of the shelving rock.

But she had not uninvited him, after all.