The visit which Aunt Victoria paid them when Sylvia was ten years old was more peaceable than the one before it.  Perhaps the interval of five years between the two had mellowed the relationship; or more probably the friction was diminished because Aunt Victoria arranged matters so that she was less constantly in the house than usual.  On that occasion, in addition to the maid who always accompanied her, she brought her little stepson and his tutor, and with characteristic thoughtfulness refused to impose this considerable train of attendants on a household so primitively organized as that of the Marshalls.  They all spent the fortnight of their stay at the main hotel of the town, a large new edifice, the conspicuous costliness of which was one of the most recent sources of civic pride in La Chance.  Here in a suite of four much-decorated rooms, which seemed unutterably elegant to Sylvia, the travelers slept, and ate most of their meals, making their trips out to the Marshall house in a small, neat, open carriage, which, although engaged at a livery-stable by Mrs. Marshall-Smith for the period of her stay, was not to be distinguished from a privately owned equipage.

It can be imagined what an event in the pre-eminently stationary life of the Marshall children was this fortnight.  To Judith and Lawrence, eight and four respectively, Aunt Victoria’s charms and amenities were non-existent.  She was for Judith as negligible as all other grown-ups, save the few who had good sense enough to play games and go in swimming.  Judith’s interest centered in the new boy, whom the Marshalls now saw for the first time, and who was in every way a specimen novel in their limited experience of children.  During their first encounter, the well-groomed, white-linen-clad boy with his preternaturally clean face, his light-brown hair brushed till it shone like lacquer, his polished nails and his adult appendage of a tutor, aroused a contempt in Judith’s mind which was only equaled by her astonishment.  On that occasion he sat upright in a chair between his stepmother and his tutor, looking intently out of very bright blue eyes at the two gipsy-brown little girls in their single-garment linen play-clothes, swinging their tanned bare legs and feet from the railing of the porch.  They returned this inspection in silence—­on Sylvia’s part with the keen and welcoming interest she always felt in new people who were well-dressed and physically attractive, but as for Judith with a frankly hostile curiosity, as at some strange and quite unattractive new animal.

The next morning, a still, oppressive day of brazen heat, it was suggested that the children take their guest off to visit some of their own favorite haunts to “get acquainted.”  This process began somewhat violently by the instant halt of Arnold as soon as they were out of sight of the house.  “I’m going to take off these damn socks and shoes,” he announced, sitting down in the edge of a flower-bed.