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.