But she waited so long that he began to grow uneasy. After that first
glance she had turned her back on the door as if she repented coming,
and, satchel in hand, stood hesitating on the top step ready for flight.
At least that is the way Hawkins interpreted her attitude. He could not
see her face.

It was a plain little face, sunburned as a gypsy's, with a generous
sprinkling of freckles on her inquisitive nose. But it was a lovable
face, happy and eager, with a sweet mouth and alert gray eyes that
seemed to see to the bottom of everything. Sometimes its expression made
it almost beautiful. This was one of the times.

She was not gazing regretfully after the departed 'bus as Hawkins
surmised, but with a pleasure so keen that it fairly made her catch her
breath, she was looking at the strange landscape and recognizing places
here and there, made familiar by kodak pictures, and the enthusiastic
descriptions of old pupils. There was the long flight of marble steps
leading down the stately terraces to the river--the beautiful
willow-fringed Potomac. There was the pergola overhung with Abbotsford
ivy, and the wonderful old garden with the sun-dial, and the
rhododendrons from Killarney. She had heard so much about this place
that it had grown to be a sort of enchanted land of dreams to her, and
now the thought that she was actually here in the midst of it made her
draw in her breath with a delicious little shiver.

Hawkins, from his peep-hole through one of the mullioned sidelights of
the great entrance, to which he had now advanced, saw the shiver, and
misinterpreting it, suddenly opened the door. It gave her such a start,
so absorbed had she been in her surroundings, that she almost toppled
down the steps. But the next instant it was Hawkins who was having the