And led half by curiosity, half by the eagerness in Phebe’s pretty face, Denham opened the letter and read, Phebe glancing over it with him as if she couldn’t bear to lose sight of it an instant.

“DEAR PHEBE,” so ran the letter, “your favor of 9th inst. rec.  I had no idea of intruding ourselves upon you when I asked you to look up rooms, but as you seem really to want us”—­("seem!” whispered Phebe, putting her finger on the word with a pout)—­“I can only say we shall be very glad to come to you.  You may look for Olly and myself Friday, July 15th, by the P.M. train.  Olly isn’t really ill, only run down.  He is as horrid a little bear as ever.  All are well, and started last week for Narragansett Pier.  I shall rejoice to get away from the art school and guilds, which keep on even in this intemperate weather, and I shall be glad to see you again, Phebe, my dear,” (Phebe looked up triumphantly in Denham’s face as she reached the words.) “Remember me to Mrs. Lane and Miss—­, I can’t think of her name,—­Aunt Lydia, I mean.

“Sincerely yours

“GERALDINE VERNOR,

“P.S.—­Olly only drinks milk.”

Phebe took back the letter and folded it up.  “Well?” she said.

“Well?” said Denham, looking at her and smiling.

“It’s just like her,” declared Phebe.  “It’s so downright and to the point.  Gerald never wastes words.”

“You said it was like a man’s letter,” said Denham.  “But I must beg leave to differ with you there.  I don’t think it is at all such a letter as I would have written you, for instance.”

“Of course not.  It wouldn’t be proper for you to say ‘Phebe, my dear,’ as Gerald does.  Yours would have to be a very dignified, pastoral letter.”

“Yes, addressed to ‘My Lamb,’ which you couldn’t object to in a pastoral letter of course, and which sounds nearly as affectionate, blaming you for having caused me to lose the valuable information I might have gained about the Baroness Bunsen.  I never got much farther than her birth in that famous history.  I see poor Miss Delano casting longing glances in here.  I’ll smuggle her in among you young people.”

He departed on his errand of mercy, and soon had the timid little old maid in the more congenial atmosphere of the parlor, where little by little, though in a very stealthy and underhand way, the talk grew more general, and the restraint slackened more and more, until sewing and reading were both forgotten and the fun became fast and furious, culminating in the sudden appearance of Jake Dexter dressed up as an ancient and altogether unlovely old woman, whom Dick Hardcastle presented in a stage whisper as “Baroness Bunsen in the closing chapter,” and who forthwith proceeded to act out in dumb show the various events of that admirable woman’s life, as judiciously and sonorously touched upon by Mr. Webb in the drawing-room opposite.  Jake was a born actor, and having “done up” the Baroness, he proceeded to “do up” several