The return trip to Wadsworth was accomplished without incident, and, bidding Mr. Schofield good-bye, Allan ran up to his office to assure himself that everything was all right, and then, after writing a necessary order or two, turned his steps homeward. The night was still and clear and it seemed to him that his steps rang on the pavement more loudly than usual. Certainly, as they turned in at the gate, they must have been heard within the Welsh home, for a moment later, the front door was opened and Mamie stood there, light in hand, to welcome him.
Allan looked at her smiling down at him, with a strange little stirring of the heart. She had grown up almost without his noticing it; he had been so absorbed in his work that he had not seen the change from girlhood into young maidenhood. He knew, of course, that she had progressed through the graded schools and at last, triumphantly, through the High school; he knew, when he stopped to think of it, that she would soon be seventeen; but she had continued, to all intents and purposes, the child he had snatched from death in the first days of their meeting. Now, somehow, all that was changed, and he gazed up into her face, seeing clearly, for the first time, what a winsome face it was.
“So you’re back!” she cried, standing aside that he might enter. “But I heard Number Two whistle in half an hour ago.”
“Yes,” said Allan. “I had a little work to do before I could come home. Do you know, Mamie,” he added, pausing beside her in the little hall, and looking down at her, “I’d never noticed before what a pretty young woman you’ve been growing into.”
The colour in Mamie’s cheeks deepened a little, but the blue eyes lifted to his did not waver, nor was there a trace of self-consciousness in her laugh.
“Look at these freckles,” she cried, her finger on them.
“Beauty spots!”
“And this pug nose.”
“A love of a nose!”
“And this big mouth.”