There were lights in the wide brick cottage. Strangers lived there now. A swinging sign above the gate set forth that a Doctor Ransome dwelt therein.
The eddying fall of leaves is depressing. Autumn anyhow is a melancholy time. Alexina, going in, closed the door.
CHAPTER TWO
The Blair reception to introduce their niece may have been to others the usual matter of lights and flowers and music, but to the niece it was different, for it was her affair.
She and her aunt went down together. The stairway was broad, and to-night its banister trailed roses.
Alexina was radiant. She even marched up and kissed her uncle. Things felt actually festive.
All the little social world was there that evening. Alexina recalled many of the girls and the older women; of the older men she knew a few, but of the younger only one could she remember as knowing.
He was a rosy-cheeked youth with vigorous, curling yellow hair, and he came up to her with a hearty swinging of the body, smiling in a friendly and expectant way, showing nice, square teeth, boyishly far apart. She knew him at once; he had gone to dancing school when she did, and she was glad to see him.