"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me—I'll always do for chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be up till day after to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'
"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger, much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a travelling man.
"Here, though, was a stranger—and such a stranger. She was so unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside—a star, so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud clinging about that brightness—a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.
"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.
"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.
"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'
"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in. I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'
"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please, Robin, and meet these people.'
"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule, where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there against the big, black background of the night and the village, while Mis' Emmons presented her.