fringes of the Hatchard spruces, caught the straw hat of a young man
just passing under them, and spun it clean across the road into the
duck-pond.

As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed
that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was
laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh at such
mishaps.

Her heart contracted a little, and the shrinking that sometimes came
over her when she saw people with holiday faces made her draw back into
the house and pretend to look for the key that she knew she had already
put into her pocket. A narrow greenish mirror with a gilt eagle over it
hung on the passage wall, and she looked critically at her reflection,
wished for the thousandth time that she had blue eyes like Annabel
Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to spend a week with
old Miss Hatchard, straightened the sunburnt hat over her small swarthy
face, and turned out again into the sunshine.

"How I hate everything!" she murmured.

The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the
street to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at
three o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in
the fields or woods, and the women indoors, engaged in languid household
drudgery.

The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about
her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger
in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to