seemed to have
been lived in for a year at least. The earth had been banked up at the
foundations for warmth in winter, and the sheathing of the walls had
been splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a
good roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their
places and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block
of wood suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood
hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the
Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in
their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking
low. They wondered whether there were anybody in the house; and decided
that there must be, for there was smoke coming out of the stove pipe
piercing the roof of the wing at the rear.

Mr. Lander brought himself under censure by venturing, without his
wife's authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the
butt of his whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from
the region of the stove pipe, "Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa!
The'e's somebody knockin'." The sound of feet, soft and quick, made
itself heard within, and in a few moments a slim maid, too large for a
little girl, too childlike for a young girl, stood in the open doorway,
looking down on the elderly people in the buggy, with a face as glad as
a flower's. She had blue eyes, and a smiling mouth, a straight nose, and
a pretty chin whose firm jut accented a certain wistfulness of her lips.
She had hair of a dull, dark yellow, which sent out from its thick mass
light prongs, or tendrils, curving inward again till they delicately
touched it. Her tanned face was not very different in color from her
hair, and neither were her bare feet, which showed well above her ankles
in the calico skirt she wore. At sight of the elders in the buggy she
involuntarily stooped a little to lengthen her skirt in effect, and at
the same time she pulled it together sidewise, to close a tear in it,
but she lost in her anxiety no ray of the joy which the mere presence of
the strangers seemed to give her, and she kept smiling sunnily upon them
while she waited for them to speak.

"Oh!" Mrs. Lander began with involuntary apology in her tone, "we just
wished to know which of these roads went to South Middlemount. We've
come from the hotel, and we wa'n't quite ce'tain."

The girl laughed as she said, "Both roads go to South Mid