Mr. Shotover himself lived above the bank—with his family, consisting of his wife and two daughters. Mrs. Shotover suffered from a terrible disease—that of thinking herself ill when nothing was the matter with her except her paramount interest in herself—the source of at least half the incurable disease among idle people. The elder daughter was a high-spirited girl about twenty, with a frank, friendly manner, indicating what God meant her to be, not what she was, or had yet chosen to be. She was not really frank, and seemed far more friendly than she was, being more selfish than she knew, and far more selfish than she seemed: she was merry, and that goes a great way in seeming. Her mother spent no regard upon her; her heart was too full of herself to have in it room for a grown-up daughter as well, with interests of her own. The younger was a child about six, of whom the mother took not so much care by half as a tigress of her cub.
One morning, a little before eight o’clock, as Clare was coming down from his room to open the windows of the bank, he just saved himself from tumbling over something on the attic stair, which was dark, and at that point took rather a sharp turn. The something was a child, who gave a low cry, and started up to run away: there was not light enough for either to discern easily what the other was like. But Clare, to whom childhood was the strongest attraction he yet knew, bent down his face from where he stood on the step above her, and its moonlight glow of love and faith shone clear in the eyes of the little girl. The moment she saw his smile, she knew the soul that was the light of the smile, and her doll dropped from her hands as she raised them to lay her arms gently about his neck.
“Oh!” she said, “you’re come!”
He saw now, in the dusk, a pale, ordinary little face, with rather large gray eyes, a rather characterless, tiny, up-turned nose, and a rather pretty mouth.
“Yes, little one. Were you expecting me?” he returned, with his arms about her.
“Yes,” she answered, in the tone of one stating what the other must know.
“How was it I frightened you, then?”
“Only at first I thought you was an ogre! That was before I saw you. Then I knew!”
“Who told you I was coming?”
“Nobody. Nobody knew you was coming but me. I’ve known it—oh, for such a time!—ever since I was born, I think!”