"DEAR ROBERT:—I did not understand at all. I thought something quite different from the truth. I have just found out about things. Please come and talk to me till dinner-time, if you like; and then let me tell you how perfectly horrid I think myself.
"BARBARA."
This she sealed with a care that contrasted curiously with the haste with which she had written it. Then she called her maid and sent it around to the stately-doorwayed office on Bowling Green.
The answer that came was merely a bunch of dark red roses, with never a written word; but Barbara found it quite satisfactory. To Robert it would have seemed superfluous to have said he would come. Barbara made her toilet with especial care, selecting everything with a view to making herself look as nearly as possible like the Barbara of the old Second Westings days. As she surveyed herself in the glass, she was astonished at the result. Had she really put the hands of time back five years? As she remembered, she had looked just so on the afternoon when Robert came, and found her in the apple-tree reading "Clarissa." It was three o'clock already,—and Robert had been waiting already half an hour in the drawing-room below,—but she took yet a few minutes more for a finishing touch. She basted up a deep tuck in her petticoat,—about half an inch off for each year blotted from her calendar,—and then, with flaming eyes and mouth wreathed in laughter, she ran down to receive her guest. It was the direct obverse of the meeting she had planned.
"Did you ride over, Robert? Or did you come in the canoe?" she asked, as if she had but that moment jumped down out of the apple-tree.
"Barbara!" he cried, and seized and kissed both hands.
"I was beginning to fear that you had forgotten the way to Second Westings!" she went on, in gay reproach. "Why, it is weeks since you were over; and the young catbirds in the currant bush have grown their wings and flown; and the goldenrod's in flower; and the 'Early Harvests' are beginning to turn red on the old apple-tree over by the gate; and how will you explain your long absence, sir, to Aunt Hitty, and Doctor John, and Doctor Jim, I'd like to know!"
Robert was devouring her with his eyes as she spoke. "Oh, you do indeed look just as you did that day I found you in the apple-tree!" he cried, at last. "So weary long ago,—yet now, sweet lady, it seems but now!"
"Let us play it is but now," laughed Barbara.
"Yes," said Robert,—"but please don't send me right away to Doctor Jim, as you did that morning! I will try not to incur your displeasure. And don't be in such a hurry to get back to 'Clarissa' as you were then!"