But she drew in her horse sharply, for the moment at a loss; for it was not fairies, but Captain Prescott, riding smilingly toward them, very handsome on his fine mount.

“It’s—­one of our officers,” she said sharply.  “I—­I’ll have to present him.”

“Oh please—­please!” was the girl’s panic-stricken whisper.  “Let me get out!  I must!  I can’t!”

“You can.  You must!” commanded Katie.  And then she had just time for just an imploring little:  “For my sake.”

He had halted beside them and Katie was saying, with her usual cool gaiety:  “You care for this day, too, do you?  We’re fairly steeped in it.  Ann,”—­not with the courage to look squarely at her—­“at this moment I present your next-door neighbor.  And a very good neighbor he is.  We use his telephone when our telephone is discouraged.  We borrow his books and bridles; we eat his bread and salt, drink his water and wine—­especially his wine—­we impose on him in every way known to good neighboring.  Yes, to be sure, this is Miss Forrest of whom I told you last night.”

As the Captain was looking at Ann and not seeming overpowered with amazement, looking, on the other hand, as though seeing something rarely good to look at, Katie had the courage to look too.  And at what she saw her heart swelled quite as the heart of the mother swells when the child speaks his piece unstutteringly.  Ann was doing it!—­rising to the occasion—­meeting the situation.  Then she had other qualities no less valuable than looking Florentine.  That thing of doing it was a thing that had always commanded the affectionate admiration of Katie Jones.

It was not what Ann did so much as her effective manner of doing nothing.  One would not say she lacked assurance; one would put it the other way—­that she seemed shy.  It seemed to Katie she looked for all the world like a startled bird, and it also seemed that Captain Prescott particularly admired startled birds.

He turned and rode a little way beside them, he and Katie assuming conversational responsibilities.  But Ann’s smile warmed her aloofness, and her very shyness seemed well adjusted to her fragility.  “And just fits in with what I told him!” gloated Kate.  And though she said so little, for some reason, perhaps because she looked so different, one got the impression of her having said something unusual.  She had a way of listening which conveyed the impression she could say things worth listening to—­if she chose.  One took her on faith.

He said to her at the last, with that direct boyish smile it seemed could not frighten even a startled bird:  “You think you are going to like it here?” And Ann replied, slowly, a tremor in her voice, and a child’s earnestness and sweetness in it too:  “I think it the most beautiful place I ever saw in all my life.”

At the simple enough words his face softened strangely.  It was with an odd gentleness he said he hoped they could all have some good times together.