he
house."

"I wonder how we shall get on," mused Georgiana. "Anyhow she'll see what
a market this is for evening frocks cut on her lines!"

CHAPTER IV

A LITERARY LIGHT

Many hours afterward, the labours of the day over, Georgiana bent her
dark head above an old-fashioned writing-desk in a corner of the
living-room, and dashed off the contemplated letter to her almost
unknown cousin. How the invitation would be received she had little
idea, but since a letter of thanks was undeniably due in response to the
"Semi-Annual" box, it was certainly a simple and natural matter enough
to offer in return for it a possible pleasure and a certain benefit.

"I'll run straight down to the post-office and mail it," declared
Georgiana, sealing and stamping her letter after having read it aloud to
her father. "A run in this March wind will be good for me after baking
and brewing all day."

"Do, daughter; and take a tumbler or two of jelly to Mrs. Ames, by the
way. And pick a spray or two of the scarlet geranium to go with it." Mr.
Warne spoke from the depths of an old armchair by the living-room fire,
where, with a lamp at his elbow, he was not too deep in a speech of the
elder Pitt on "Quartering Soldiers in Boston," to take thought for an
invalid whom he considered far less fortunate than himself.

"I will--poor, disagreeable old lady. She doesn't admit that anything
tastes as it should, but I observe our jelly is never long in
disappearing."

Georgiana, now wearing in honour of the close of day a simple frock of
dark-blue wool with a dash of scarlet at throat and wrists, donned a big
military cape of blue, scarlet lined, and twisted about her neck a scarf
of scarlet silk (dyed from a Semi-Annual petticoat!), which served less
as a protection than as the finishing touch to her gay winter's night
costume. She was likely to meet few people on her way, but there were
always plenty of loungers in the small village post-office, and not even
a college graduate could be altogether disdainful of the masculine
admiration sure to be found there, though she might ignore it.

As she closed the house door, lifting her face to a cold, starlit sky
from which the clouds of the day had broken away at sundown, another
door a few rods down the quiet street banged loudly, and the sharp creak
of rapid footsteps was immediately to be heard upon the frozen gravel.
Georgiana smiled in the darkness at the coincidence of that banging
door.