"No," said Mary, "I'm glad mother wouldn't let us go; we should have been soaked through by this time."
Just then Ellen, the housemaid, put her head in at the door.
"If you please, Miss Mary," she said, looking very much inclined to laugh, "there's a strange gentleman in the drawing-room asking to see you."
"To see me, Ellen? Are you sure?" asked Mary in surprise. "Didn't he ask to see father or mother?"
"The master and mistress are both out, Miss," said Ellen; "and he asked if you were in"; and then she hurried away in answer to a ring at the back-door bell.
"Oh, Ruth, supposing it's the foreign gentleman!" said Norah.
"Nonsense, Norah," said Ruth; "you never think of anything else."
When Mary opened the drawing-room door, however, she began to think that perhaps Norah was right after all, and the queer-looking old gentleman on the sofa was really the foreign gentleman who had come to live at the Grange.
He wore a pair of very large, blue spectacles, and had a long, white beard and bushy, white eyebrows which almost met over his nose; and he had a tight, little black silk cap on his head, and was dressed in a long, loose black coat, which showed glimpses of a crimson silk waistcoat underneath.
He was quite a short, old gentleman, Mary saw, as he rose to his feet and made her a very low bow; and he was very fat, the little girl thought to herself—almost as broad as he was long.