Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother’s foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just returned with it.  She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter’s feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which the party was, and came up behind her.

She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, instinctively, and turned as she spoke.

“What for?” asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and grasping hers before she was well aware.

There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise crimsoned her cheek.  These two had not seen each other all summer.

Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other.

“Not to say anything for two years!” she thought, recalling inwardly her brother’s wise injunction.  “It says itself, though; and it was made to!”

“How do you do, Mrs. Argenter?  I hope you are feeling better for your country summer?  Aunt Effie! You’re not surprised to see me?  Did you think I would let you go down without?”

No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing.  And she was at this moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in the most inaccessible corner of the car.

“You’re not going down to the city?”

But he was.  Rodney’s eyes sparkled as he told her.

“Your own doctrine exemplified.  Things always happen, you say.  One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all others,—­repairing machinery.  I’m off work, for the first time in four months.  There has been no low water all summer.  Regular header, straight through.  Don’t you see I’m perfectly emaciated with the confinement?  I’ve breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a pincushion.”

“An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion!  Yes, I think you do look a little like it!” Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did, because she was so pleased she could not help it.

They paired, naturally.  Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been filled.  Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a House of Refuge.

“I will not have it called that, though.  It shall not be stamped with any stereotyped name.  It shall not even be a Home,—­except my home; and I’ll just take them in:  I and Euphrasia.”

There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff.