a spicy
hardiness of pink, and the gnarled apple-trees had shed their broken
branches, and were covered with little green buttons of fruit. Dilly
stopped to look about her, and her eyes filled. The tears were hot; they
hurt her, and so recalled her to the needs of life.

"There!" she said, "I mustn't do so!"--and she walked straight forward
through the open shed, and fitted her key in the lock. The door sagged;
but she pushed it open and stepped in. The deserted kitchen lay there in
desolate order, and the old Willard clock slept upon the wall. Dilly
hastily pushed a chair before it (this was the only chair old Daniel
Joyce would allow the children to climb in) and wound the clock. It
began ticking slowly, with the old, remembered sound. Somehow it seemed
beautiful to Dilly that the clock should speak with the voice of all
those years agone; it was a kind of loyalty which appealed to the soul
like a piercing miracle. Then she ran through to the sitting-room, and
started the old eight-day in the corner; and the house breathed and was
alive again. She threw open the windows, all save those on the Dilloway
side (lest kindly neighbors should discover she was at home), and the
soft rose-scented air flooded the rooms like an invisible presence, and
bore out the smell of age upon gracious wings. Now, Dilly worked fast
and steadily, lest some human thing should come upon her. She tied up
bedclothes, and opened long-closed cupboards. She made careful piles of
clothing from the attic; and finally, her mind a little tired, she sat
down on the floor and began looking over papers and daguerreotypes from
her father's desk. Just as she had lost herself in the ancient history
of which they were the signs, there came a knock at the back door. So
assured had become her idea of a continued housekeeping, that the
summons did not seem in the least strange. The house lived again; it had
thrown open its arms to human kind.

"Come in!" she called; and a light step sounded in the kitchen and
crossed the sill. It was a man, dark-eyed and very handsome. "Oh!"
murmured Dilly, catching her breath and holding both hands clasped upon
the papers in her lap. "Jethro!"

The stranger was much moved, and his black eyes deepened. He looked at
her kindly, perhaps lovingly, too. "Yes," he said, at last. "So you'd
know me?"

Dilly got lightly up, and the papers fell about her in a shower; yet she
made no motion toward him. "Oh, yes," she said softly, "I s