XIX
While he waited the cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "Hello, old lady," he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightly against his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and played frantically with the frayed bottoms of his trousers.
This preliminary welcome seemed to comfort him out of all proportion to its significance; he gazed complacently about at the trees and flowers, drew in deep breaths of the lilac's fragrance, and waited, listening contentedly for the coming foot-fall.
He had not heard it when the door opened and a young girl appeared on the threshold, standing with one hand resting on the inner knob; the other touching the pocket of her apron, in which was a ball of yarn stuck through with two needles.
She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth was perhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners; and her eyes were quite perfectly made, except that one was hazel-brown and the other hazel-grey.
Hat in hand, Brown bowed; and then she did a thing which interested him; she lifted the edges of her apron between slender white thumbs and forefingers and dropped him the prettiest courtesy he had ever seen off the stage.
"I came to inquire," he said, "whether you ever take summer boarders."
"What are boarders?" she asked. "I never heard of them except in naval battles."
"Thank heaven," he thought; "this is remote, all right; and I have discovered pristine innocence in the nest."