ne had seen with her
own eyes a plump, yellow German fall suddenly on his knees at Aunt
Edith's feet, as a hand-organ struck up its brassy music under the
window, and burst into passionate singing, waving a whisk-broom in
the air and offering it to Aunt Edith with the most extraordinary
force of manner. And her aunt, who wore at the time a raincoat and
tam o'shanter cap, had leaned forward graciously, gurgled out a most
delicious little tune, accepted the whisk-broom, affected to inhale
its fragrance rapturously, and whirled into a big and beautiful song
in which the plump, yellow gentleman joined, and rising seized her
in his arms, at which point they drowned the hand-organ completely,
and the hand-organ man and Uncle Joe applauded loudly, and they gave
the hand-organ man all he could eat and a dollar.

You may see from this that one did not look for the commonplace in
Aunt Edith's house. Moreover, the stranger was not unlike some of
her aunt's friends; though he was handsome and assured and
noticeably at his ease, Caroline felt that his manner was subtly
different from that of the friends of her own family. But even the
most unconventional guest had never collected the sideboard silver,
and a little feeling was growing in the air ... doubt and a bit of
what might have begun to be fear ... when suddenly the man began to
laugh. It was abrupt and it rang harshly at first, but grew with
every moment warmer and more infectious, so that Caroline, though
she felt that she was in some way the cause of it, joined in it
finally, in spite of herself.

"If you knew what a sight you were!" he exclaimed, wiping his eyes
with the napkin, "with your hair all cobwebs and all that dirt on
your knees and those finger-marks on your apron, and being so small
and all"--he began to chuckle again.

"Small?" she repeated portentously.

"Oh, I didn't mean small compared with--with anybody else the same
size," he assured her quickly.

Catching her mollified glance, he went on more soberly.

"And how did you get in, now? No doors, I'll bet."

"Under the kitchen porch, through the little cellar window and up
the back stairs," she explained.

"You mean to say you were out in that little back hall and I never
heard you?"

She nodded. "I took pains to be still," she added, "so as to
surprise the--so if there had been--"

"I understand," he said gravely, "so as to get them if they had been
there. Well, you'd have done it. You're all rig