“I have been wanting to ask a great many questions,” she said, “but I have felt ashamed to do it.  I have nearly always lived in the country, but I know hardly anything about barns and cows and stables and hay and all that.  Do the hens lay their eggs up there in your hay?”

Miriam smiled gravely.

“It is very hard to find out,” she said, “where they do lay their eggs.  Some days we do not get any at all, though I suppose they lay them, just the same.  There is a henhouse, but they never go in there.”

Cicely moved toward the stairway, and then she stopped; she cast her eyes toward the mass of hay in the mow above, and then she gave a little sigh.  Miriam looked at her and understood her perfectly, moreover she pitied her.

“How is it,” said she as they went down the stairs, “that you lived in the country, and do not know about country things?”

“We lived in suburbs,” she said.  “I think suburbs are horrible; they are neither one thing nor the other.  We had a lawn and shade trees, and a croquet ground, and a tennis court, but we bought our milk and eggs and most of our vegetables.  There isn’t any real country in all that, you know.  I was never in a haymow in my life.  All I know about that sort of thing is from books.”

When, with many thanks for the courtesies offered them, Mrs. Drane and her daughter had driven away, Miriam sat by herself on the piazza and thought.  She had a good deal of time, now, to think, for Molly Tooney was a far more efficient servant than Phoebe had been, and although her brother gave her as much of his time as he could, she was of necessity left a good deal to herself.

She began by thinking what an exceedingly gentlemanly man her brother was; in his ordinary working clothes he had been as much at his ease with those ladies as though he had been dressed in a city costume, which, however, would not have been nearly so becoming to him as his loose flannel shirt and broad straw hat.  She then began to regret that her mind worked so slowly.  If it had been quicker to act, she would have asked that young lady to come some day and go up in the haymow with her.  It would be a positive charity to give a girl with longings, such as she saw that one had, a chance of knowing what real country life was.  It would be pleasant to show things to a girl who really wanted to know about them.  From this she began to think of Dora Bannister.  Dora was a nice girl, but Miriam could not think of her as one to whom she could show or tell very much; Dora liked to do the showing and telling herself.

“I truly believe,” said Miriam to herself, and a slight flush came on her face, “that if she could have done it, she would have liked to stay here a week, and wear the teaberry gown all the time and direct everything,—­although, of course, I would never have allowed that.”  With a little contraction of the brows, she went into the hall, where she heard her brother’s step.