With considerable excitement and some perturbation, we looked forward to the stranger's arrival. On the very day we expected him, we had our second "bite," to use Jack's expressive metaphor.
[CHAPTER VI]
THE FIRST ARRIVAL
WHEN Thursday came I could see that Aunt Patty looked forward with some nervousness to the arrival of her guest. Everything was in readiness. The Professor would be hard to please if he did not like the pleasant room, to which aunt had added a bookcase and a writing-table, and contrived to give quite the appearance of a sitting-room.
"Will he care for any flowers, do you think, Nan?" aunt asked, as we put the finishing touches to its arrangement.
"Not if he is like the Vicar," I replied.
"He may surely have scholarly habits without being exactly like Mr. Upsher," aunt said with a smile. "I should put a few if I were you. A room looks so bare and unhomelike without them."
So I went into the garden and picked half-a-dozen of the lovely daffodils, which by this time had opened more freely, and put them, with some of their lance-like leaves, in a tall, slender vase which I placed on the Professor's writing-table.
I had been in the woods that morning and had brought home some of the first primroses, smelling so freshly of their mother Earth. Pleased with the effect of the daffodils, I brought a little bowl which I had filled with primroses resting amid tiny sprays of ivy, and stood it on the top of the low bookcase.
"The room does look nice," I said to myself then, "almost too nice for a dry old professor." I gave the fire a stir and went away to change my dress, for we did not expect our visitor till close upon dinner-time. He was coming by the six o'clock train, and Jack had volunteered to meet him and bring him to "Gay Bowers."