"You are going?"
"This morning."
"And this afternoon?"
"I scarcely think I shall go. I have been up to Monticello so often, and I think I'll stay at home and make a cake."
"Why don't you go, Frances?" her father protested.
"It will be a chocolate cake," she was laughing at him over the sheaf of chrysanthemums, "and you shall have all you want!" And the professor was disarmed.
Some one else had noticed this same tendency of housekeeping. When Frances was busily beating eggs in the kitchen, the bell rang. She went on with her work without a thought of visitors, for the tally-ho party was large and included all their friends, the younger ones at least. Susan had gone on an errand, and the boy, hurrying carelessly through kitchen and dining-room and library, left each door open as he went through.
"T'aint no one home but Miss Frances," he said to the young man on the door-step, "and she's busy in the kitchen."
The young man went past him into the library; through the doors he glimpsed Frances, back towards him. He stepped out of the line of vision, "Very well!" he said in a low tone to the boy gaping in the doorway, "you need not tell her; I'll announce myself!"
The boy, green, untrained, as Lawson knew him to be, hastened on through the back door of the hall to his work at the woodpile. Lawson trod softly across the rooms. The swift beater in Frances' hands deafened her ears to other sounds. He came close behind her, and spoke her name before she knew the warm sunny kitchen held any but herself.