"How came I?" said Janet, slowly. "Do I know him well?"
"I thought so from the way he spoke of you. He quoted you and referred to sundry walks in the country and such. He knew the Sunday rhyme you made about the worm, too."
"Did he?" said Janet, indifferently. "I wonder who told him. Your vivid imagination has enlarged the importance of the situation. I met him out here at Ramsay's farm one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday last May when I ran away from everybody. We had rather a nice off-to-ourselves morning, I remember. After that I went, I think it was three times to that little reading room at the other end of town. I told you about that, I am sure."
"Is that all?" asked Cordelia, incredulously.
"I shall not go away off there this year," remarked Janet; "it is too far, and I didn't fancy the experience as a steady thing. Do have some of these preserves. They are home-made, you know. Mother packed me a box of them, and I know they are good because the fruit came from our own place and I helped to gather it."
Cordelia accepted the proffered sweets and did not notice that Janet had deftly changed the subject.
"Does any one know who has our old rooms?" asked Teddy.
"Some little up-start freshmen," Lee told her. "It made me mad when I was over there, to see them switching in and out our doors."
Cordelia laughed. "But why, Lee? We could have had them again if we had wanted. Our coming here was our own choice. You didn't expect they would seal up those rooms because of the sanctity lent them by our presence."
"No, not that, of course; but it is on the same principle that I always hate to see our housemaids wear my cast-off clothes."