“Ridiculous!” said Sally to herself, in the hall.  “I shall never look in that kitchen glass again, when anybody is here.  As if I ever did any special ‘primpin’’ for an old friend like Jarvis!  Girls like that are always thinking silly things.”  And she walked on to the hall door, of half a mind not to open it after all, lest Jarvis himself think his welcome too eager.  Yet, as she always did open it for him, or for any other of their special friends whom she chanced to see approaching, she promptly discarded this line of conduct as absurd, and threw the door wide with the hospitable sweep to which he was so accustomed that he would have been surprised and puzzled at its absence.

He looked at her over his armful of books, his face red with the sting of the sharp January air, his eyes keen through the eye-glasses astride his nose.  Goggles were now a thing of the past, but the eyeglasses, their lenses thick with the combination of formulae which had ruled their grinding, were a permanent necessity.  It was the first time Sally had seen him since he had acquired them.

“Very becoming,” she said, critically, as he put down the books on the hall table, pulled off the handsome driving-gloves which, according to Max, helped to disqualify him for his present ambitions, and shook hands with heartiness.  “You no longer look pathetic, but distinguished—­even scientific.”

“‘Scientific’ is the word, if you want to flatter me,” he declared, throwing off his overcoat and gathering up the books again.  “I’m acquiring agricultural science by the peck measure—­chock full and running over.  I’ve reached the point where I must get rid of some of it upon my partners or suffer serious consequences.  Max here?  Was it he at the window?  I can’t see more than a rod through these things yet—­not used to them.”

“Yes, he’s here.  He always spends his Saturday half-holiday at home now.  The rest are away.  Alec and Bob are off on the hill by the timber lot, trying Mr. Ferry’s toboggan with him—­it’s just come.  Uncle Tim has gone over to see how they’re making it go.”

“Glad the coast is clear.  It might embarrass me to set forth my schemes to more than two at once.”

Sally led the way to the living-room—­in old times the “drawing-room,” but now deserving the less imposing title after a fashion which made it the most homelike of apartments.  It was the only room on the lower floor—­except the dining-room and kitchen—­which the Lanes had attempted to furnish for the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and pleasant.  A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable.  The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally.  This might have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally had hung curtains of Turkey-red print at the windows, and had covered the couch and its pillows with the same warm-coloured fabric, with a result so pleasing to the eye that visitors, at the first sight, were wont to exclaim:  “Who would think you could have made this big room look so homelike?  How have you done it?”