ard the open front door, and then on down the steps.

"Wait a minute here," Ross came back from halfway to the automobile,
"Aren't you going?" For it had penetrated his consciousness that she
had not come any farther than the top step.

"No."

"Why not?"

She blushed a trifle. "I ... I thought I wouldn't."

All her shyness was up in arms.

It was very probably going to be hard enough at best, this first
meeting with Arethusa, without staging it before a crowd of prying eyes
in a railroad station. In spite of all her longing to see and know the
girl, and her loving preparation, now that the moment was actually
come, Elinor's shyness intruded and kept her at home.

Ross understood (it was one of the very nicest things about him, his
understanding) but as he was feeling a bit the same way himself, he
would have liked the bulwark of her presence. Two shy folk to back each
other up are in not nearly so bad a fix as the one who goes it alone.
So he stood hesitatingly in the middle of the front walk, slowly
drawing on his gloves. Perhaps Elinor would change her mind.

"You'll be late," she warned.

But still he hesitated. "How in the dickens am I going to know the
child? I haven't the remotest idea what she's like. I may miss her
altogether. I think I need you."

His statement of not knowing what Arethusa was like was perfectly true,
for in none of her letters had Miss Eliza once mentioned Arethusa's
personal appearance and Elinor had never thought to ask about it.

"You should have told her," he continued, almost reproachfully, "to
wear a red carnation or something. I am quite sure I shan't be able to
find her. And you're so much smarter than I am. Your woman's intuition
is a great thing to have in a search, You better come go 'long."

Elinor came down the walk to where he was and gave him a push. "Do go
on, Ross. You really will miss her altogether, if you don't. And I
haven't time to dress now, so I can't possibly go. She probably looks
like her mother or some member of the family."

"Now, I don't know about that," he answered, still lingering. "She may
not at all. I don't look like my mother, and you...."

"Oh, please go on and stop fooling!" Though she laughed, his wife's
patience was ebbing. It would be dreadful for Arethusa to come and find
no one to meet her. "You always hurry so, Ross, when there's no real
necessity for it and won't when there is!"

Ross decided that the moment for actual departure w