ou are! How very like!"

She stood looking at him for a moment. Then--"May I come in?"

"Of course you may--but first"----looking at his hands and
shirt-sleeves, "first I must----."

"I can go in alone," said she frankly.

"Of course--please do! Go in by the front-door. I'll send the maid--"
and he hurried towards the kitchen.

She ran round to the front of the house and up the steps. Turning an
enormous key, an old work of art (as was also the iron-work on the
door), she stepped into the hall or entrance room. Here there was plenty
of light. Marit drew a little. She had learned to use her eyes. She saw
at once that all these cupboards, large and small, were of excellent
Dutch workmanship, and that the room was larger than it seemed; the
furniture took up so much space. On her left an old-fashioned carved
staircase led up to the second storey. The door straight in front of her
led to the kitchen, she concluded, assisted by her sense of smell; and
when the maid-servant issued from it she knew that she had guessed
rightly. Through the open door she saw a floor flagged with marble,
walls covered with china tiles decorated in blue, and, upon the shelf
which extended round the walls, brightly polished copper vessels of many
different sizes--a Dutch kitchen.

In the hall she stood upon carpets thicker than any her feet had ever
trodden. And quite as thick were those on the stairs, secured with the
hugest of brass rods. "The people in this house walk on cushions," she
thought to herself; and the idea immediately occurred to her that the
house was an enormous bed. Afterwards she always called it "the bed."
"Shall we go back to bed now?" she would say, laughing. On both sides of
the hall she saw doors and pictured to herself the rooms within. To her
left, that is, on the right side of the house, she imagined first a
smaller room, and beyond it, nearest the sea, a large room, the whole
breadth of the building. And she was correct. To her right she imagined
the house divided lengthwise into two rooms. And in this also she was
correct. Nor was it surprising that she should be, for her father's
house on the shores of Lake Michigan was planned in imitation of this.
Upstairs she pictured to herself a broad passage the whole length of the
house, with moderate-sized rooms on both sides of it. The carpets were
extraordinarily thick down here, but she was certain that they were at
least as thick upstairs, real cushion carpets. In th