“Look, mother!” she exclaimed. “Do you see that man just turning the corner to come this way? It looks like Felix!”
“So it does!” the other cried.
They were both silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the dim figure, gaining definiteness now with each step toward them. “It doesn’t walk like him,” Penelope commented, her face already showing that she knew it was not he. But the mother hung a little longer to her hope. “No, it isn’t Felix,” she presently acquiesced, disappointment evident in her gentle tones. “I so hoped it was, at first.”
With a firm, rapid stride the young man was coming eagerly up the street, his eyes upon their house. “He doesn’t walk at all like Felix,” Penelope repeated thoughtfully as his figure became more plainly visible through the veiling snow, “but it’s curious how much like him he looks, after all.”
“See, Penelope!” the mother exclaimed, reaching out to grasp her daughter’s hand in sudden enthusiasm. “See how he comes out of the snow mist! Isn’t it just like a figure in a dream getting plainer and clearer, and more like life!”
Penelope pressed her mother’s hand and smiled up at her fondly. “Just like you, mother, to make something pretty out of a disappointment!”
They gazed at the advancing figure with renewed interest and saw that the man, with slightly slackened pace, seemed to be closely observing their house and yard. What he saw was a one-story red cottage, needing paint, its green window shutters looking old and somewhat dilapidated, its yard, of ample size and dotted with trees and shrubbery, surrounded by a wooden fence in whose palings were occasional breaks and patches. It was a commonplace object in an ordinary winter scene, but he seemed to feel in it the deepest interest. There was even a frown on his brow as his alert glance rested on a broken pane in the kitchen window.
“It has been a long time since Felix was here—six months, hasn’t it, mother?” said Penelope, leaning back wearily again as the stranger passed from her range of vision.
“Hardly so long as that, dear. It was last fall. But, of course, he is very busy. He hasn’t the time to travel around now and go visiting, even over here to see us, that he used to have, before he had begun to be so successful. We mustn’t expect too much.” As she spoke, her gentle tones as full of indulgence and excuse as her words, she moved to the front window and sought the figure of the stranger, now striding along the snow-covered sidewalk in front of her own yard.