ek ahead of Smith,
anyway. Thank you." He turned to his work again.

* * * * *

Miss Pamela Roscoe lived in a large house freshly painted white, with
dark green blinds, chronically closed. To the front door wandered a
box-bordered gravel path, and up this avenue Annie Jenkins walked in
the red radiance of the September afternoon. Like a good soldier, she
had donned her brightest armor, and her muslin skirts flicked in a
friendly yet business-like way against the green. She raised the heavy
brass knocker, its rattle shook the door and echoed through an empty
hall.

Miss Pamela Roscoe heard the sound, and went softly, with no show of
haste, to a window that commanded what is, in local parlance, known as
a _handsome view_ of the front porch, from which vantage she remarked
her visitor through peeping shutters.

But she waited--it is not considered good form in Roscoe to admit a
stranger too eagerly--for a decent interval to elapse. Thanks to aunt
Mary's coaching, Annie did not knock again, but stood in pretty
decision with her eyes straight before her. A leisurely footstep
sounded within; the latch lifted with dignity, the door opened a crack
at first, then more widely; and, outlined against a blacker
background, stood the tall, stern, forbidding figure of Miss Pamela
Roscoe herself!

She was a lady of fateful appearance, black-haired and pale, with a
marvelous impression of preservation. Her manner was of the _nil
admirari_ sort, and her voice what Annie afterward described as
_mortuary_. The girl murmured her name, a wan smile welcomed her.

"Come right in, Miss Jenkins," the gloomy voice began, "only I don't
want you should step off that oilcloth. I ain't going to get that
carpet all tracked up. You go right on into the front room"--a gaunt
arm pushed her toward a darker space--"and I'll open up there in a
minute."

Miss Pamela, at the window, threw back the shutter, rolled up a
curtain and the western sunlight filled the place. Annie took the
chair which her hostess dusted ostentatiously, a stout, wooden rocker
with a tidy--Bo-Peep in outline stitch in red--flapping cozily at its
back but Miss Roscoe still stood.

"It ain't hospitable, I know," her monotone apologized; "a first
visit, too--but I'm going to ask you to excuse me a minute right at
the set-off. When you knocked, I was buying some berries of the
Collamer twins, and just a-measuring of them. I don't allow no one to