were both silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the dim figure, gaining definiteness now with each step toward them. “It doesn’t walk like him,” Penelope commented, her face already showing that she knew it was not he. But the mother hung a little longer to her hope. “No, it isn’t Felix,” she presently acquiesced, disappointment evident in her gentle tones. “I so hoped it was, at first.”
With a firm, rapid stride the young man was coming eagerly up the street, his eyes upon their house. “He doesn’t walk at all like Felix,” Penelope repeated thoughtfully as his figure became more plainly visible through the veiling snow, “but it’s curious how much like him he looks, after all.”
“See, Penelope!” the mother exclaimed, reaching out to grasp her daughter’s hand in sudden enthusiasm. “See how he comes out of the snow mist! Isn’t it just like a figure in a dream getting plainer and clearer, and more like life!”
Penelope pressed her mother’s hand and smiled up at her fondly. “Just like you, mother, to make something pretty out of a disappointment!”
They gazed at the advancing figure with renewed interest and saw that the man, with slightly slackened pace, seemed to be closely observing their house and yard. What he saw was a one-story red cottage, needing paint, its green window shutters looking old and somewhat dilapidated, its yard, of ample size and dotted with trees and shrubbery, surrounded by a wooden fence in whose palings were occasional breaks and patches. It was a commonplace object in an ordinary winter scene, but he seemed to feel in it the deepest interest. There was even a frown on his brow as his alert glance rested on a broken pane in the kitchen window.
“It has been a long time since Felix was here – six months, hasn’t it, mother?” said Penelope, leaning back wearily again as the stranger passed from her range of vision.
“Hardly so long as that, dear. It was last fall. But, of course, he is very busy. He hasn’t the time to travel around now and go visiting, even over here to see us, that he used to have, before he had begun to be so successful. We mustn’t expect too much.” As she spoke, her gentle tones as full of indulgence and excuse as her words, she moved to the front window and sought the figure of the stranger, now striding along the snow-covered sidewalk in front of her own yard.
“Penelope! He’s coming here!” she exclaimed, starting back and dropping the muslin curtain she had pushed aside. “He’s turning in at our gate! He does look like Felix – a little. Who can it be!”
Penelope bent forward to peer through the curtains and saw the man mounting the steps to their little veranda and stamping the snow from his feet. Instantly she wheeled her chair about and sped it into the adjoining room as her mother opened the door to their visitor.
“You are Mrs. Brand, I think? Felix Brand’s mother?” he said. “I am a friend of his – my name is Hugh Gordon – and as I was coming to Philadelphia I promised him I would run out here and see you.”
As they entered the living room his keen, dark eyes swept it alertly, as they had the exterior of the house. A shade of disappointment crossed his face.
“Your daughter?” he asked abruptly. “May I not see her, too?”
Mrs. Brand hesitated. The shyness of her girlhood years still lingered in her manner when in the presence of strangers, and she glanced at her visitor, then at the floor, and her hands fluttered about her lap. Gordon’s face and eyes softened as he looked at her. There was something very sweet and appealing in the gentle diffidence of this little, plain, elderly woman.
“Penelope doesn’t often see people – anyone, and she is very unwilling to meet strangers. Perhaps Felix told you – you know – ”
“Yes, I know. I understand how she feels, but I want very much to see her. I know Felix well, and I know a good deal about her, enough to make me honor and admire her very much. Won’t you tell her, please, that I came out here particularly to see you and her, and that I shall be much disappointed if I have to go back without meeting both of you?”
Penelope soon returned with her mother and both had many questions to ask concerning Felix. Was he well? Was he working harder than he ought? Was his new apartment very beautiful? Had Mr. Gordon seen the plans for the new monument with which he had won in the national competition?
He used to send them photographs, Penelope said, but lately they knew little about his work unless they saw pictures of it in the newspapers.
But, indeed, they didn’t expect so much attention from him now, her mother quickly added, for as his work increased and became of so much importance they understood how necessary it was for him to give it all his time and thought.
“It would really be selfish,” she went on, “as I sometimes tell Penelope, to want him to spend time on us, writing long letters, or coming over here, when we know that his success depends upon his devoting all his energies to his work.”
Penelope, silent and gazing out of the window, was conscious of Gordon’s quick glance at her, and was conscious too of the appeal in her mother’s wistful brown eyes, which she felt were turned upon her. So many years these two had passed in intimate companionship and in loving ministration on one side and utter dependence on the other, that spoken word was scarcely needed between them to make known the mood of each to the other.
In immediate response she turned, with a smile that lighted up her controlled, intellectual face, and said:
“Of course, we quite understand how occupied Felix is all the time, but that doesn’t keep us from liking to know about him. So your visit, Mr. Gordon, is quite a godsend, and you mustn’t be surprised that we ask you so many questions about Felix and want to know all about him and what he is doing.”
Her voice was low, with rich notes in it, and her manner quite without self-consciousness. Notwithstanding her deformity and her secluded life, she betrayed neither shyness nor embarrassment. In both manner and speech was the poise that is usually the result of much association with the world.
“Yes,” Gordon was assenting, “Felix has many irons in the fire, and he is planning to have more. But he thinks of you both, and you would be surprised to learn how much I know of you – through him.” He rose and as he moved across the room to Penelope’s chair he continued: “You, I know, Miss Brand, love the sunshine and the out-of-doors.” He hesitated a moment and then went on, pouring out his words with a sort of abrupt eagerness:
“But I don’t want to call you ‘Miss Brand!’ It doesn’t seem as if I were talking to you. I feel as if I had known you so long that I want to call you ‘Penelope,’ as Felix does. Will you let me? You won’t mind if I do? Oh, thank you! You are very kind to me, for I realize what a stranger I must seem to you, although I feel as if I had known you both such a long time. Well, then, Penelope,” and he smiled and nodded at her, as he crossed the room to the front window and drew back the curtain, “how would you like to have one end of this porch enclosed with glass, so that you could sit out there with your wraps on, all winter, even on days like this, and feel almost as if you were out of doors? It wouldn’t seem quite so shut in as the house, would it?”
She leaned back with a sigh and then smiled. “Yes, it would be pleasant. But it is now some years since I quit wishing for the things I can’t have.”
“Ah, but you’re going to have this,” he exclaimed, his face beaming. “Felix is preparing a little surprise for you, but he gave me permission to tell you about it.”
The expression upon the faces of both women and their little exclamations told Gordon, as he glanced from one to the other, that their surprise was as great as their pleasure.
