oom. Even when the door
to the dining-room opened and quick, light steps came to the foot of the
stairs, she did not heed them. A confused, hushed sound of someone busy
about various small operations did not rouse her, and it was not until
the fall of a large object, clattering noisily on the floor, that she
became conscious that someone beside the maid was in the hall. She
leaned forward, and saw that the object which had fallen was the
newel-post of the stairs. It had evidently been detached from its
fastenings by the workman who, with his back to her, now knelt over a
tool-box, fumbling among the tools with resultant little metallic clicks.

Lydia ran down the stairs, finger on lip. "Hush! Don't make any more
noise than you can help. Mother's still asleep." At his gaze of
stupefaction she broke into her charming light laugh, "Why, I always
seem to strike you speechless. What's the matter with me now?"

The other emerged from his surprise with a ready, smiling acceptance of
her tone, "I was wondering if I oughtn't to apologize to you--if I
should ever see you again--for being so curt this morning. And then you
spring up out of the ground before me. Well, so I will apologize. I do.
I'm very sorry."

They adopted, as in the first part of their earlier talk, the
half-humorous familiarity of people surprised in an unconventional
situation, but, in spite of this, the young man's apology was not
without the accent of serious sincerity.

Lydia responded heartily in kind. "Oh, it was I who was horrid.
And--wasn't it funny--I was just thinking--wondering if I should ever
have a chance to try to make you see that I didn't mean to be so--" she
hesitated, and fell back on iteration again--"so horrid."

The fashionable Endbury boarding-school had not provided its graduate
with any embarrassment of riches in the way of expression for various
shades of meaning. He answered, lowering his voice as she did, "Oh, you
were all right, but I was most objectionable with my impertinent laugh.
I'm sorry."

She challenged his sincerity, "Are you really, really?"

"Oh, really, really," he assured her.

"And you want to do something nice to make it up to me?"

"Anything," he promised, smiling at her as at a child.

"You've promised! You've promised!" She indulged herself in a noiseless
hand-clasp. "Well, then, the forfeit is to tell me all about it."

"All about what?"

"Goodness gracious! Don't you remember? That's what we were bo