One girl in particular seemed deeply interested. She was Linda Blair, a bizarre, slender creature, tall, with reddish-brown hair and a thoughtful smile.
"A boarding house!" she exclaimed, incredulous when Bab told her the nature of Mrs. Tilney's establishment. "Do you really mean it?"
"Oh, yes," returned Bab, amused; "it was the landlady and one of the boarders who brought me up!"
"Not really?" cried the girl, her air shocked. "A clerk and a boarding-house keeper?"
"They were the two kindest people in the world," returned Bab, and after a gasp the other recovered herself.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "I didn't understand!"
Bab knew she hadn't.
Kind, pleasant, friendly like himself, these were the friends that David brought to her. The grim, dark old house after years of silence awoke again. Young voices were heard within it; there were young folk roaming its vast dim rooms and halls. Upstairs one day Beeston, its master, heard unwonted sounds below; and he sat up, frowning curiously. Not for twenty years had he heard such sounds in his house.
"What's that?" he grumbled.