lan. "What the dickens has
this girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?"

"But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir," was all Wallis
vouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllis
had hypnotized.

He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes and
personal belongings were coming on immediately. There were two
suit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The young
madam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy had
been left behind to look after the other servants, and he understood
that she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for the
country. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh from
the monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Wallis
could tell him very interesting.

* * * * *

Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of being
near the little station: a new little mission station which had
apparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estate
agency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to be
a Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid old
country name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passage
from the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed to
make room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepy
birds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtime
had come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogether
spring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allan
forgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certain
degree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolled
up so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseen
though it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too,
enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room.

They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house.
Phyllis evidently had learned that Allan didn't like his carryings
about done before people.

Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He and
Arthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end of
the house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient,
being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoining
bedroom, and when Wallis had made him