"Another cup please, Susanna," said Marion; and while she poured the tea, Norah coaxed the fire into a blaze, remarking that it had fallen into the way of sympathizing with the weather.
"Are you in the habit of treating your customers in this fashion?" Miss Sarah asked, accepting the cup and helping herself from the plate of warm tea-cakes with which Susanna returned.
"This is a reward to rainy-day callers," answered Marion, smiling.
"Well, you are the most astonishing people I ever came in contact with. I hope you don't mind my saying it," Miss Sarah spoke confidentially. "I don't mean in respect to tea."
"Not at all," laughed Norah. "We, too, have our impressions of the neighborhood."
"I shouldn't be surprised if you had." Miss Sarah joined in the laugh. "Of course it is no secret to you that the neighborhood did not very much want you, and the way in which you are winning us over is a miracle. Miss Wilbur, Charlotte, Alex, and now you have captured Mr. Goodman. Charlotte told me about the party. How do you do it?"
"It has all come about through the merest accident," Marion explained.
"Such accidents don't happen to everybody. I think you practise witchcraft."
"James Mandeville and the birthday cake captured Giant Despair," said Norah, the name slipping out before she thought.
"So that is what you call him! Have you named us all? It suits him, too; but poor man, he has had his troubles, as have some of the rest of us." Miss Sarah looked meditatively into the fire. "Soon after he built his house in the Terrace," she continued, "his daughter, an only child, was burned to death. It was a sad thing,—she was just eighteen. Then a nephew whom he adopted turned out a scamp, and now he has lost faith in everything."