“My first visitor!” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in. I’ll make a place for you to sit in a minute.” He shoved the couch away from before the fire, and removing a pair of trousers and a heap of hose from one of his splint-bottomed chairs, he threw them in a corner and placed it before the hearth. “You walked, didn’t you? And your feet are wet, of course. Sit here and dry them.”

She pushed back her sunbonnet and held out to him a quaint little basket made of willow withes, which she carried, but she took no step forward. Although her lips smiled a fleeting wraith of a smile that came and went in an instant, he thought her eyes looked troubled as she lifted them to his face.

He took the basket and lifted the cover. “I brought you some pa’triges,”