“I hate to have you go, but I’ll walk over with you just to get a little more air,” said Dolly, settling her fur turban on her blonde locks.  “Now we must go down softly, for Miss Cynthia may still be here.  I dare say Frank is somewhere about, and mother can get him to take her home,” she added, as if she half felt the need of an apology.  “I’m sure it’s his turn to go, anyway.”

It was with the feeling of being guilty conspirators that the girls stole down-stairs and tiptoed softly across the hall, and they both jumped violently, when, even as Dorothy had her hand on the door-knob, Mrs. Marshall’s voice called: 

“Dorothy, is that you, dear?”

“Yes, mother,” answered Dorothy in a voice expressive of resigned despair.  Then she added in a tragic whisper, “We are lost!  There is no escape from our unhappy fate!”

“Dorothy, Miss Cynthia is here, and I want you to see that she gets safely home,” said her mother.

“Yes, mother,” answered Dorothy again, looking at Ruth with an I-told-you-so expression.  “Don’t you dare to leave me, Ruth Shirley,” she went on fiercely.  “You’ll have plenty of time to go with me.  Come on in now and be introduced to her.”

Ruth hardly knew what picture she had formed of Miss Cynthia, but she certainly hadn’t expected to meet the pretty, pink-cheeked old lady to whom Mrs. Marshall presented her.  She was the smallest, most delicate of creatures, with snowy hair and bright blue eyes, which in darting glances seemed to absorb in minutest detail the person to whom she was talking.

“And so this is Ruth Shirley,” she said, holding one of Ruth’s hands in both her tiny ones.  “I’m very glad to know you, my dear.  It seems as if Mrs. Hamilton might have brought you over to call on me before this.  But then I’m used to being forgotten.  How are Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, and how is that dear boy, Arthur?” Miss Cynthia paused for breath and Ruth gladly released her hand.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton are very well,” she answered, “and Arthur is much—­”

“I always said he would be better if he would only make an effort,” interrupted Miss Cynthia triumphantly.  “But I began to be afraid he never would, and I thought it most likely that he would go off into a decline, I’ve often told Mary Hamilton that I should be worried to death if he were my boy.  Do you hear from your father often?  It must be pretty bad to have him so far away; so many things can happen nowadays that you can’t tell from one day to the next where you’ll be or how you’ll be.  Of course you know that, though, having lost your mother, poor child.”

“She hears very often from her father,” said Mrs. Marshall, noticing Ruth’s flushed cheeks, “and he makes the distance seem very short by sending cablegrams every once in a while.  Now, Miss Cynthia, let me help you on with your cape, and then you can start out with an escort on each side of you.”

“Now, girls, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t talk much,” said Miss Cynthia apologetically, as they were leaving the house; “this icy wind makes my throat feel sore.  But I shall be delighted to hear you talk.  Girls always have such a lot to say to each other.”