“Pardon me. It was awfully good of you to come,” he said in another tone. “I hoped you would, and I believed you would unless you were prevented. And really——”
“You will stay right here now that you have made it so comfortable, won’t you?” Alice asked eagerly.
“O, I didn’t do it for that. I wanted to have a decent place for you to come to,” he said, boyishly ingenuous. Despite his gaunt face, which was also lined, and his grey hair, he was really youthful as he spoke.
“What a lot of work for a person you never saw but once,” she said. “I felt last night—when we saw Mr. Langley, you know—that we hadn’t settled anything—I mean, I thought I might help you—tell you about people or find out about those I don’t know—but——”
She paused. “I’m talking for all the world like Miss Penny,” she owned. “What I mean to say is that I am glad I did manage to arrange to see you to-day and that I was able to get away. And I am glad you have done this because it will make it comfortable for you. You can stay here as long as you choose—make it your headquarters.” And she went on to say that she and her mother were to remain at the Hollow for some time.
“You will stay, won’t you?” she begged.
“It would be perfectly bully if I could,” he cried eagerly. “I could—well, reconnoiter from here in grand style.”
But as he referred to his purpose in this region, the boyish look fled and he looked sad and perhaps old. And Alice remembered Enoch Arden and her heart ached for him.
But he was a boy again as he made the tea, served her, and sat down with his own cup. Alice, too, was a younger girl than she would have been if she had never known Anna Miller. They dallied happily over the ceremony and afterwards went to the top of the stair so that Alice might see the change in the upper chamber, which was as wonderful as that below. The upper room, indeed, with its tent roof, beams, rafters and brick chimney, its window at either end and its built-in benches was more attractive than the lower. Alice rather hoped John Converse would suggest their sitting there, but he did not, and they returned to their chairs in the lower apartment to begin finally upon the real business of the afternoon.
“I don’t really know how to start out,” Alice remarked. “The people I know best are Miss Penny and the Miller family.”