a dark cloak, and gave a little cry of joy —
"Alva! Here I am – all safe."
Then she was enwrapped in the same dark cloak herself, for the space of one warm, all-embracing hug, her friend repeating over and over, "I'm so happy to have you – so happy to have you." And then they moved away through the little group of bystanders, and started up the cinder-path towards the hotel.
"I'm so happy to have you!" Alva exclaimed again, when they were alone. She did not even seem to know that she had said so before.
"It was so good of you to ask me! How did you come to think of it? And oh, Alva, what are you doing here, in this lonely place?"
"It will take me all your visit to properly answer those questions, dear; but I'll tell you this much at once. I asked you because I wanted to have you with me, and because I thought that you and I could help one another a great deal right now. And I am here, dear, because I am the happiest woman that the world has ever seen, and because the greatest happiness that the world has ever known is to be here in a few weeks."
Lassie stopped short, astonished.
Alva went on, laughing gaily: "Yes, it is so! Come on, – or you will stumble without my lantern to guide you. I'm going to tell you all about everything when we get alone in our room, but now, little girl, hurry, hurry. Don't stop behind."
So Lassie swallowed her astonishment for the time being, and followed.
The hotel stood on the crest of the hill above the station and the railway's path curved by it. They were there in a minute, and in another minute alone up-stairs in their room – or rather, rooms – for there were two bedrooms, opening one into the other.
"Why, how pretty you have made them," the young girl cried; "pictures, and a real live tea-table. And a work-stand! How cosy and dear! It's just as if you meant to live here always."
Her face glowed, as she absorbed the surprising charm of her new abode. One does not need to be very old or to have travelled very extensively to recognize some comforts as pleasingly surprising in the country.
Alva was hanging up her cloak, and now she came and began to undo the traveller's with a loving touch.
"Why, in one way I do mean to live here always, dear. I never am anywhere that I do not – in a certain sense – live there ever after. People and places never fade out of my life. Wherever I have once been is forever near and dear to me, so dear that I can't bear to remember anybody or anything there as ugly. The difference between a pretty room and an ugly one is only a little money and a few minutes, after all, and I'm beginning to learn to apply the same rule to people. It only takes a little to find something interesting about each. We'll be so happy here, Lassie; how we will talk and sew and drink tea in these two tiny rooms! I've been just feasting on the thought of it every minute since you wrote that you could come."
Lassie hugged her again. "I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to think of coming and having a whole fortnight of you to myself. Every one thought it was droll, my running off like this when I ought to be deep in preparations for my début, but mamma said that the rest and change would do me good. And I was so glad!"
Alva had gone to hang up the second cloak and now she turned, smiling her usual quiet sweet smile as she did so.
"It's a great thing for me to have you, dear; I haven't been lonely, but my life has been so happy here that I have felt selfish over keeping so much rare, sweet, unutterable joy all to myself, – I wanted to share it."
She seated herself on the side of the bed, and held out her hand in invitation, and Lassie accepted the invitation and went and perched beside her.
"Tell me all about it," she said, nestling childishly close; "how long have you been here anyway?"
"A week to-day."
"Only a week! Why, you wrote me a week ago."
"No, dear, six days ago."
"But you spoke as if you had been here ever so long then."
"Did I? It seemed to me that I had been here a long time, I suppose. Time doesn't go with me as regularly as it should, I believe. Some years are days, and the first day here was a year."
"And why are you here, Alva?"
"Oh, that's a long story."
"But tell it me, can't you?"
"Wait till to-morrow, dearest; wait until to-morrow, until you see my house."
"Your house!"
"I've bought a house here, – a dear little old Colonial dwelling hidden behind a high evergreen wall."
"A house here – in Ledge?"
"No, dear, not in Ledge – in Ledgeville. Across the bridge – "
"But when – "
"A week ago – the day I came."
"But why – "
Alva leaned her face down against the bright brown head.
"I wanted a home of my own, Lassie."
"But I thought that you couldn't leave your father and mother?"
"I can't, dear."
"Are they coming here to live?"
"No, dear."
"But I don't understand – "
"But you will to-morrow; I'll tell you everything to-morrow; I'd tell you to-night, only that I promised myself that we would go to a certain dear spot, and sit there alone in the woods while I told you."
"Why in the woods?"
"Ah, Lassie, because I love the woods; I've gotten so fond of woods, you don't know how fond; trees and grass have come to be such friends to me; I'll tell you about it all later. It's all part of the story."
"But why did you come here, Alva, – here of all places, where you don't know any one. For you don't know any one here, do you?"
"I know a man named Ronald Ingram here; he is the chief of the engineering party that is surveying for the dam."
"Is he an old friend?"
"Oh, yes, from my childhood."
Lassie turned quickly, her eyes shining:
"Alva, are you going to marry him?"
Her face was so bright and eager that something veiled the eyes of the other with tears as she answered:
"No, dear; he's nothing but a friend. I was looking for a house – a house in the wilderness – and he sent for me to come and see one here. And I came and saw it and bought it at once; I expect to see it in order in less than a fortnight."
"Then you're going to spend this winter here?"
Alva nodded. "Part of it at any rate."
"Alone?"
Alva shook her head.
Lassie's big eyes grew
