“What are you looking at so intently?”
Mabin, who, leaning on her crutches, was gazing up at that mysteriously interesting window, started violently as she saw a white hand, glistening with diamonds, thrust suddenly out through the ivy in the midst of a space which she had taken for blank wall.
And, parting the close-growing branches, Mrs. Dale peeped out, pink and fair and smiling, from a window at the same level as the one Mabin had been watching, but so thickly covered with ivy that the girl had not suspected its existence.
“I—I was looking for you. I was hoping to see you,” stammered Mabin.
“And now that you have seen me, won’t you please condescend to see a little more of me?” asked Mrs. Dale. “I won’t eat you up if you come into my den. Look, here is another inhabitant whom I have entrapped. But there are strawberries enough for three.”
Mabin hesitated; not from any scruples about the propriety of visiting the lady about whom so much gossip was talked, certainly, but because she was shy, and because the thought of a meeting and a talk with her ideal heroine and a stranger seemed rather formidable.
But Mrs. Dale would not allow her time to refuse.
“I will send the other inhabitant down to let you in,” said she.
And the ivy closed again, and Mabin could hear the lady’s voice giving some directions to some person within. She moved mechanically, on her crutches, toward the high closed gates. And by the time she reached them they were opening, and Rudolph was holding them back for her.
The girl could not repress a slight exclamation of astonishment. Rudolph reddened.