The door was opened by a tall slender girl, whose golden-brown hair was flying in wild confusion over her white forehead and red cheeks, and across her blue eyes, in which, as in the hair, flashed a glint of gold. She smiled and laughed apologetically, and thrust her floating hair back from her face with both her hands.
"Miss Layard?" said the stranger, raising his hat and bowing. He thought, "What beauty, what health, what spirits, what grace, what youth, what deliciousness!"
"Yes," she answered, stepping back for him to enter. "Mr. Crawford?" she asked in her turn.
"My name is Crawford," he said going in. "I--I was not quite prepared to find you what you are, Miss Layard--I mean so--so young. When your brother spoke to me of his sister, I fancied he meant some one much older than himself."
She smiled, and laughed again as she led him into the front room, now in a state of chaotic confusion.
"We did not expect you till later. My brother has not come home yet. We have only moved in to-day, and we are, O! in such dreadful confusion."
On the centre of the floor was spread a square of very old threadbare carpet, leaving a frame of worn old boards around it. In the centre of the carpet stood a small dining-table. Nothing else in the room was in its place. The half-dozen poor chairs, the chiffonnier, the one easy-chair, the couch, were all higgledy-piggledy. The furniture was of the cheapest kind, made to catch the inexperienced eye. Although evidently not old, it was showing signs of decrepitude. It had once, no doubt, looked bright and pleasant enough, but now the spring seats of the chairs were bulged, and the green plush expanse of the couch rose and fell like miniature grazing-land of rolling hillocks.
The young girl placed a seat for her visitor, and took one herself with another of those bright cheerful laughs which were delicious music, and seemed to make light and perfume in the darkening cheerless room.
"My brother told me you were not likely to be here until ten; but your rooms are all ready, if you wish to see them."
She leant back in her chair and clasped her hands in her lap, a picture of beautiful, joyous girlhood.