But they were not in sight yet to Marjorie’s vision, and she stood leaning over the gate looking at the windows with their white shades dropped and already feeling that the little, new home was solitary.  She did not turn until a footstep paused behind her; she was so lost in dreams of Linnet and Morris that she had not noticed the brisk, hurried tread.  The white rose had fallen from her hair and the one at her throat had lost several petals; in her hand was a bunch of daisies that Morris had picked along the way and laughingly asked her to try the childish trick of finding out if he loved her, and she had said she was afraid the daisies were too wise and would not ask them.

“Haven’t you been home all this time?” asked Hollis, startling her out of her dream.

“Oh, yes, and come back again.”

“Do you find the cottage so charming?”

“I find it charming, but I could have waited another day to come and see it.  I came to walk part of the way with Morris.”

She colored, because when she was embarrassed she colored at everything, and could not think of another word to say.

Among those who understood him, rather, among those he understood, Hollis was a ready talker; but, seemingly, he too could not think of another word to say.

Marjorie picked her daisies to pieces and they went on in the narrow foot path, as she and Morris had done in the afternoon; Hollis walking on the grass and giving her the path as her other companion had done.  She could think of everything to say to Morris, and Morris could think of everything to say to her; but Morris was only a boy, and this tall stranger was a gentleman, a gentleman whom she had never seen before.

“If it were good sleighing I might take you on my sled,” he remarked, when all the daisies were pulled to pieces.

“Is Flyaway in existence still?” she asked brightly, relieved that she might speak at last.

“‘Stowed away,’ as father says, in the barn, somewhere.  Mr. Holmes is not as strict as he used to be, is he?”

“No, he never was after that.  I think he needed to give a lesson to himself.”

“He looks haggard and old.”

“I suppose he is old; I don’t know how old he is, over forty.”

“That is antiquated.  You will be forty yourself, if you live long enough.”

“Twenty-two years,” she answered seriously; “that is time enough to do a good many things in.”

“I intend to do a good many things,” he answered with a proud humility in his voice that struck Marjorie.

“What—­for example?”

“Travel, for one thing, make money, for another.”

“What do you want money for?” she questioned.

“What does any man want it for?  I want it to give me influence, and I want a luxurious old age.”

“That doesn’t strike me as being the highest motives.”

“Probably not, but perhaps the highest motives, as you call them, do not rule my life.”