sort of little laugh. It rings through the room, this laugh, and has
the effect of frightening her _altogether_ this time. She checks
herself, and looks first down at the carpet with the big roses on
it, where one little foot is wriggling in a rather nervous way, and
then up again at the professor, as if to see if he is thinking bad
things of her. She sighs softly.

"Have you come to see me or Aunt Jane?" asks she; "because Aunt Jane
is out--_I'm glad to say"_--this last pianissimo.

"To see you," says the professor, absently. He is thinking! He has
taken her hand, and held it, and dropped it again, all in a state of
high bewilderment.

"Is _this_ the big, strong, noisy girl of his imaginings? The
bouncing creature with untidy hair, and her clothes pitchforked on
to her?"

"Well--I hoped so," says she, a little wistfully as it seems to him,
every trace of late sauciness now gone, and with it the sudden
shyness. After many days the professor grows accustomed to these
sudden transitions that are so puzzling yet so enchanting, these
rapid, inconsequent, but always lovely changes

"From grave to gay, from lively to severe."

"Won't you sit down?" says his small hostess, gently, touching a
chair near her with her slim fingers.

"Thank you," says the professor, and then stops short.