confession the coast is clear. And—you would not mind my smoking in my room?"
Georgiana glanced at her father with a suddenly mischievous expression. He was studying the prospective boarder with interested eyes.
"I think," confessed Mr. Warne, "that merely to catch a whiff now and then of a fragrance which is singularly pleasant to me, but which I am denied producing for myself, would add to the things that give me comfort. If you wouldn't mind smoking in the hall now and then, or, better yet, by my fireside, I should be grateful."
Mr. Jefferson nodded. "Thank you, sir. And now—when may I come? I have a room at the hotel, so don't let me in until you are quite ready."
"You may come to-morrow night for supper," promised Georgiana. "But you haven't seen the room." She rose.
"It will be in the upper right front?" hazarded Mr. Jefferson. "And it will have the customary furnishings and some means of heating?"
"I should prefer to have you see it," she insisted, and lighted a candle in an ancient pewter candlestick with an extinguisher at the side.
So the stranger, following her upstairs, surveyed his room and professed himself entirely satisfied. It looked bare enough to Georgiana as she showed it to him, but she told herself that there were possibilities in the matter of certain belongings of her own room which could be transferred to give an air of homelikeness to this.
"It is large, and I can have plenty of light and air," commented the prospective boarder. "If I might have some sort of good-sized table by that south window, for my work, I should consider myself provided for."
"You will find one when you come," promised the girl.
"Thank you. Now, I will take myself off at once. Then you may have a chance to discuss with your father the probabilities in favour of your not regretting your quick decision," he said as he descended the stairs.
"Father and I always make quick decisions," Georgiana remarked.
"Good! So do I. Do you hold to them as well?"
"Always. That's part of father's creed."
"That's very good; that speaks for itself. Well, I promise you I shall be busy enough not to bother this household overmuch. By the way"—he turned suddenly—"that table you spoke of putting in my room—if it is large, it must be heavy. Your father cannot help you lift it, and you should not lift it alone. Don't put it in place until I come—please?"
She smiled. "That's very thoughtful of you. But I am quite equal to moving it alone."
"Then let me help you now, won't you?" he offered.
She shook her head. "It's really not ready to be moved. Don't think of it again, please."
He bade them good-night and went away, with no lingering speeches on the road to the door. He had the air of a man accustomed to measure his time and to waste none of it. When he had gone Georgiana went back to her father. He looked up at her with a twinkle in his still boyish eyes.
"Well, daughter, it looks to me as if this had happened just in time to prevent a bad explosion from too high pressure of accumulated energy. You can now lower the position of the indicator on the steam gauge to the safety point by spending the whole day to-morrow in sweeping and dusting and baking. If there are any spare moments you can employ them in making over your clothes."
"Father Davy! Where did you get such a perfectly uncanny understanding?"
"From observation—purely from observation. And I myself confess to feeling considerably excited and elated. It is not every day that a gentleman of this sort knocks at the door of a village manse and asks to come in and write a book. If it had not been that my old friend Davidson is always bringing people together who need each other, I should think it the strangest thing in the world that this should happen. Davidson is the minister of a great New York church where this Mr. Jefferson attends; and Davidson has never forgotten me, though he took the high road and I the low so soon after he left the seminary. Well, it will give us a fresh interest, my dear, for as long as it lasts."
Georgiana thought it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was vigorously hailed from below.
"Ship ahoy! Your name, cargo, and destination?"
Without turning she called merrily back: "The Jefferson, with a cargo of books, bound for the public!"
"What's that? I don't get you."
"Never mind. I'm too busy to be spoken by every passing ship."
"I'll be up," called the voice, and footsteps sounded upon the porch. The front door banged, the same ringing male voice was heard shouting a "Good-morning, sir!" and the owner of the voice came leaping up the stairs and burst into the room without ceremony. He advanced till he was close to the open window, and nodded through the glass at the window-washer, who sat on the sill with her upper body outside.
He was a fine specimen of youth and brawn and energy, the young man whom Georgiana had pointed out to her friends as one of her resources when it came to the good times they were so anxious to know of. His name was James Stuart, and he was a near neighbour of the manse. He was a college graduate of three years' longer standing than Georgiana, and he, like her, had returned to the country home and his father's farm because his aging parents could not spare him, and he was the only son whose lack of other ties left him free to care for them. He and this girl had been schoolmates and long-time friends—with interesting intervals of enmity during the earlier years—and were now sworn comrades, though they still quarrelled at times. It looked, after a minute, as if this would be one of those times.
"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.
"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."
Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped into the room, quite unnecessarily assisted by Stuart.
"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."
"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming curiosity. As it is——"
"Going to have company?"
She shook her head.
"Then—what in thunder——"
"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to attack the inside of the window.
"A boarder! What sort?"
"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."
"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"
"I believe he was to exist at the hotel—if he could—for twenty-four hours," admitted Georgiana.
"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a—why, he's—he doesn't look like that sort at all."
"What
