The middle-aged woman who opened the door was evidently a member of the household and he hastily thrust into his pocket the card he had taken out, stated his name and asked if Miss Harden was at home.
“Yes, Millie’s home. Just come in, Mr. Storrs, and I’ll call her.”
But Millicent came into the hall without waiting to be summoned.
“I’m so glad to see you, Mr. Storrs!” she said, and introduced him to her mother, a tall, heavily built woman with reddish hair turning gray, and a friendly countenance.
“I was just saying to Doctor Harden that I guessed nobody was coming in tonight when you rang. You simply can’t keep a servant in to answer the bell in the evening. You haven’t met Doctor Harden? Millie, won’t you call your papa?”
Millicent opened a door that revealed a small, cozy sitting-room and summoned her father—a short, thick-set man with a close-trimmed gray beard, who came out clutching a newspaper.
“Shan’t we all go into the library?” asked Millicent after the two men had been introduced and had expressed their approval of the prolonged fine weather.
“You young folks make yourselves comfortable in the library,” said Mrs. Harden. “I told Millie it was too warm for a fire, but she just has to have the fireplace going when there’s any excuse, and this house does get chilly in the fall evenings even when it’s warm outside.”
Harden was already retreating toward the room from which he had been drawn to meet the caller, and his wife immediately followed. Both repeated their expressions of pleasure at meeting Bruce; but presumably, in the accepted fashion of American parents when their daughters entertain callers, they had no intention of appearing again.
Millicent snapped on lights that disclosed a long, high-ceilinged room finished in dark oak and fitted up as a library. A disintegrating log in the broad fireplace had thrown out a puff of smoke that gave the air a fleeting pungent scent.