Phillis was still holding it; but her manner was not quite so well assured. She thought she heard Dulce’s voice in confabulation with the stranger. A moment afterwards Dulce came briskly into the room.
“Nan, Mr. Drummond and his sister have kindly called to see us. We are not in order, of course. Oh, dear!” as Nan 134 looked down on them with startled eyes, not venturing to descend from her perch. “I ought not to have brought them in here,” looking half mischievously and half guiltily at the young clergyman, who stood hat in hand on the threshold.
“It is I who ought not to have intruded,” he began, in a perfect agony of embarrassment, blushing over his face like a girl as Nan looked down at him in much dignity, but Mattie, who was behind him, pushed forward in her usual bustling way.
“Oh, Miss Challoner, it is too bad! I told Archie that we ought not to come too soon––” but Phillis stopped her with an outstretched hand of welcome.
“What is too bad? I call it very kind and friendly of you both: one hardly expected to find such good neighbors. Nan, if that curtain is finished I think you had better come down. Take care; those steps are rickety: perhaps Mr. Drummond will help you.”
“Let me do the other ones for you. I don’t think those steps are safe!” exclaimed Archie, with sudden inspiration.
No one at home would have believed such a thing of him. Mattie’s eyes grew quite round and fixed with astonishment at the sight. He had not even shaken hands with Nan, yet there he was, mounted in her place, slipping in the hooks with dexterous hands, while Nan quietly held up the curtain.
Months afterwards the scene came back on Archibald Drummond with a curious thrill half of pain and half of amusement. How had he done it? he wondered. What had made him all at once act in a way so unlike himself?—for, with the best intention, he was always a little stiff and constrained with strangers. Yet there he was laughing as though he had known them all his life, because Nan had rebuked him gravely for slipping two hooks into one ring. Months afterwards he recalled it all: Nan glancing up at him with quietly amused eyes, Phillis standing apart, looking quaint and picturesque in her bib-apron, Dulce with the afternoon sunshine lighting up her brown hair; the low old-fashioned room, with the great carved wardrobe, and the cupboard of dainty china; the shady little lawn outside, with Laddie rolling among the daisies. What made it suddenly start up in his memory like a picture one has seen and never quite forgotten?
“Thank you, Mr. Drummond. You have done it so nicely,” said Nan, with the utmost gravity, as he lingered, almost unwilling to descend to conventionality again. Dulce and Phillis were busily engaged looping up the folds. “Now we will ask Dorothy to remove the steps and then we can sit down comfortably.”
But here Archie interposed: