The response came in this wise.  Harmony struggling home against an east wind and holding the pin-tray and her violin case, opened the old garden gate by the simple expedient of leaning against it.  It flew back violently, almost overthrowing a stout woman in process of egress down the walk.  The stout woman was Mrs. Boyer, clad as usual in the best broadcloth and wearing her old sable cape, made over according to her oldest daughter’s ideas into a staid stole and muff.  The muff lay on the path now and Mrs. Boyer was gasping for breath.

“I’m so sorry!” Harmony exclaimed.  “It was stupid of me; but the wind—­Is this your muff?”

Mrs. Boyer took the muff coldly.  From its depths she proceeded to extract a handkerchief and with the handkerchief she brushed down the broadcloth.  Harmony stood apologetically by.  It is explanatory of Mrs. Boyer’s face, attitude, and costume that the girl addressed her in English.

“I backed in,” she explained.  “So few people come, and no Americans.”

Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humble apology in her own tongue, condescended to look at Harmony.

“It really is no matter,” she said, still coolly but with indications of thawing.  “I am only glad it did not strike my nose.  I dare say it would have, but I was looking up to see if it were going to snow.”  Here she saw the violin case and became almost affable.

“There was a card in the Doctors’ Club, and I called—­” She hesitated.

“I am Miss Wells.  The card is mine.”

“One of the women here has a small boy who wishes to take violin lessons and I offered to come.  The mother is very busy.”

“I see.  Will you come in?  I can make you a cup of tea and we can talk about it.”

Mrs. Boyer was very willing, although she had doubts about the tea.  She had had no good tea since she had left England, and was inclined to suspect all of it.

They went in together, Harmony chatting gayly as she ran ahead, explaining this bit of the old staircase, that walled-up door, here an ancient bit of furniture not considered worthy of salvage, there a closed and locked room, home of ghosts and legends.  To Harmony this elderly woman, climbing slowly behind her, was a bit of home.  There had been many such in her life; women no longer young, friends of her mother’s who were friends of hers; women to whom she had been wont to pay the courtesy of a potted hyacinth at Easter or a wreath at Christmas or a bit of custard during an illness.  She had missed them all cruelly, as she had missed many things—­her mother, her church, her small gayeties.  She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeister might allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyed friends of hers.  But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be a frivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort, and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while her second was safely out of the house.