went on up the stairs, but she had caught his smile, momentarily illumining a face which was ordinarily rather grave. Georgiana closed the living-room door upon the sight of the lithe figure rapidly ascending the staircase without a glance behind. As she faced her father she assumed the expression of a merry child caught in mischief.
"Our new lodger has certainly come upon me in all sorts of situations, not to mention disguises," she remarked, "but this is the first time he has met me in the role of leading lady on the melodramatic stage. Please unhook me, Father Davy; the play is over, and it's time to get the pot-roast simmering. And what do you say to inviting lovely Jeannette Crofton to visit us? Would it be too hard on you?"
"Not at all, my dear. I should be glad to see your Uncle Thomas's daughter. Invite her, by all means. You have far too little young companionship; it will do you good to have a girl of your own age in the house."
"I wonder how we shall get on," mused Georgiana. "Anyhow she'll see what a market this is for evening frocks cut on her lines!"
CHAPTER IV
A LITERARY LIGHT
Many hours afterward, the labours of the day over, Georgiana bent her dark head above an old-fashioned writing-desk in a corner of the living-room, and dashed off the contemplated letter to her almost unknown cousin. How the invitation would be received she had little idea, but since a letter of thanks was undeniably due in response to the "Semi-Annual" box, it was certainly a simple and natural matter enough to offer in return for it a possible pleasure and a certain benefit.
"I'll run straight down to the post-office and mail it," declared Georgiana, sealing and stamping her letter after having read it aloud to her father. "A run in this March wind will be good for me after baking and brewing all day."
"Do, daughter; and take a tumbler or two of jelly to Mrs. Ames, by the way. And pick a spray or two of the scarlet geranium to go with it." Mr. Warne spoke from the depths of an old armchair by the living-room fire, where, with a lamp at his elbow, he was not too deep in a speech of the elder Pitt on "Quartering Soldiers in Boston," to take thought for an invalid whom he considered far less fortunate than himself.
"I will—poor, disagreeable old lady. She doesn't admit that anything tastes as it should, but I observe our jelly is never long in disappearing."
Georgiana, now wearing in honour of the close of day a simple frock of dark-blue wool with a dash of scarlet at throat and wrists, donned a big military cape of blue, scarlet lined, and twisted about her neck a scarf of scarlet silk (dyed from a Semi-Annual petticoat!), which served less as a protection than as the finishing touch to her gay winter's night costume. She was likely to meet few people on her way, but there were always plenty of loungers in the small village post-office, and not even a college graduate could be altogether disdainful of the masculine admiration sure to be found there, though she might ignore it.
As she closed the house door, lifting her face to a cold, starlit sky from which the clouds of the day had broken away at sundown, another door a few rods down the quiet street banged loudly, and the sharp creak of rapid footsteps was immediately to be heard upon the frozen gravel. Georgiana smiled in the darkness at the coincidence of that banging door.
"Well met!" called a ringing voice. "Curious that I should break out of Mrs. Perkins's just as you came along!"
"Very curious, Jimps. How do you manage it? I stole out like a cat just to avoid such a possibility. I knew you were there."
"Did you, indeed?" inquired the owner of the voice, coming up and standing still to look at what he could see of the military-caped form. His own strongly built figure took up its position beside hers as if by right. His hand slipped lightly under her arm, and he turned her gently to face the direction in which he himself had set out. "That's like your impertinence. To pay you for it you shall come this way," he insisted. "It's only a step farther, it's not quite so hackneyed, and it will bring us out where we want to be. Look at the stars!"
"They're wonderful!"
"Carrying something under that cape? Give it to me, chum."
"It's only a bit of a basket, Jimps; never mind, you might spill it."
"You can't carry a bit of a basket when I'm around! Spill nothing! Hand it over."
"Terribly dictatorial to-night, aren't you?"
"Possibly. I've been bossing a lot of new hands to-day, who didn't know a pick from a gang-plough."
"But you've been outdoors every minute!" Her tone was envious.
"Every blessed minute. And you've been in, puttering over a lot of house jobs? See here, you need a run. Let's take the time to go up Harmon Hill and run down it—eh? There'll not be a soul to see."
She laughed doubtfully. "I'd love to, but—the jelly?"
"That's easy." He dropped her arm, turned aside to a clump of trees at the corner of an overgrown old place which they were passing, and deposited the little basket in the shadow. He came back and caught her arm again.
"Easy, now, up the hill. I wish the snow wasn't all gone, we'd have a farewell coast at the end of the season. But there'll undoubtedly be more. Honestly, now, George, hasn't the coasting and tramping helped you through this first winter?"
"Jimps, I don't know what I should have done without it—or you."
"Thanks; I think so myself. The first winter back in the little old town, after the years away at school and college—well—— Anyhow, I pride myself the partnership has worked pretty well. We've been about as good chums as you could ask, haven't we now?"
"About as good."
"All right." His tone had a decided ring of satisfaction in it, but he did not pursue the subject further. Instead he changed it abruptly: "How does the new boarder come on?"
"Very well. We really don't mind having him at all, he's so quiet, and Father enjoys his table talk."
"Father does, but daughter doesn't?"
"Oh, yes, I do—only he doesn't talk much to me. I sit and listen to their discussions—and jump up to wait on them so often that I sometimes lose the thread."
"The duffer! Why doesn't he get up and wait on you?"
Georgiana laughed. "Jimps, we're going to have another guest."
"Another man?" The question came quickly.
"Not at all. A girl—my cousin, Jeannette Crofton. At least I'm writing to ask her for the fortnight before Easter."
"Those rich Crofton relations of yours who hold their heads so high for no particular reason except that it helps them to forget their feet are on the earth?"
"James Stuart, what have I ever said of them to make you speak like that?"
"Never
