“I believe I’m in possession of all the facts.  From now on I intend to let the fancies have full play.”

“Good for you!  I knew you’d never desert me, no matter how much in the wrong I might be,” answered Sally, gratefully.

Jarvis had been a fourth brother to her for so long that it seemed a matter of course for her to depend upon his support, but she appreciated it when occasionally the real brothers failed to remember how lonely the young sister was, with no mother at hand to love or advise her.  All but Bob.  He, the youngest of the family, was like a faithful dog, always beside her when the others jeered or reproached, and always her strongest, most faithful, ally.

“The walking is better today,” Sally called out, as they started.  Max, true to his cause, promptly denied the truth of this statement.  Josephine came to the rescue.

“Who cares what the walking is like, on an April day like this?” she challenged Max.  “Isn’t the air glorious?  And won’t it be lovely, across the bridge and along the river, as soon as the leaves are out?”

Max was escorting Josephine, and as they turned the bend in the road he pointed out to her the boundary lines of the estate.  She asked him about the values of land in this neighbourhood and the possibilities of making such a place profitable.

“You sound like a business woman,” was his comment.  “Thinking of investing out here?  You ought to get Sally to talk the place up to you.  She estimates that by raising violets on the whole forty-two acres and selling them to the florists in town we can be millionaires the first year.”

“Why not, at a dollar a bunch?” laughed Josephine.  “And think how picturesque your property will look, all a soft purple in the sunshine!”

“Won’t it!” agreed Max.  “There, that’s the house.  I suppose you’re prepared to fall into ecstasies with Sally on the door-step, and dance a reel with her down the hall.”

“Of course I am.  But what I really came for is the locked door.”

“The door!  I believe Sally’s forgotten the subject of her dreams.  We haven’t a tool, any more than we had a week ago.”

“Haven’t we though?” shouted Bob, from the rear.  He began to extract various implements from his pockets on the spot.  Sally herself waved her shopping-bag.  Jarvis Burnside pulled off his glove and began to search his own pockets.

“I think we’ll effect an entrance,” he declared, and produced a curious-looking skeleton key.  “This will open any ordinary lock.”

Josephine said everything Sally could have hoped for about the exterior of the house, and a few things more.  It did seem a little less forlorn than before, the effect, perhaps, of the April sunshine, which lighted its red brick walls into warm and cheerful hues.  Jarvis, within the door, removed his goggles and blinked approvingly at the fine colonial features of the wood-work, the lines of the stairway, and the proportions of the fireplace.