It was a gray, gusty morning.  It had not set in to rain continuously; but the wind wrung handfuls of drops suddenly from the clouds, and flung them against the panes and into the wayfarers’ faces.

Over in the house opposite the Ripwinkley’s, at the second story windows, sat two busy young persons.  Hazel, sitting at her window, in “mother’s room,” where each had a corner, could see across; and had got into the way of innocent watching.  Up in Homesworth, she had used to watch the robins in the elm-trees; here, there was human life, in little human nests, all about her.

“It’s the same thing, mother,” she would say, “isn’t it, now?  Don’t you remember in that book of the ‘New England Housekeeper,’ that you used to have, what the woman said about the human nature of the beans?  It’s in beans, and birds, and bird’s nests; and folks, and folks’ nests.  It don’t make much difference.  It’s just snugness, and getting along.  And it’s so nice to see!”

Hazel put her elbows up on the window-sill, and looked straight over into that opposite room, undisguisedly.

The young man, in one window, said to his sister in the other, at the same moment,—­

“Our company’s come!  There’s that bright little girl again!”

And the sister said, “Well, it’s pretty much all the company we can take in!  She brings her own seat and her own window; and she doesn’t interrupt.  It’s just the kind for us, Kentie!”

“She’s writing,—­copying something,—­music, it looks like; see it there, set up against the shutter.  She always goes out with a music roll in her hand.  I wonder whether she gives or takes?” said Diana, stopping on her way to her own seat to look out over Hazel’s shoulder.

“Both, I guess,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.  “Most people do.  Why don’t you put your flowers in the window, Hazel?”

“Why, so I will!”

They were a great bunch of snowy white and deep crimson asters, with green ivy leaves, in a tall gray glass vase.  Rachel Froke had just brought them in from Miss Craydocke’s garden.

“They’re looking, mother!  Only I do think it’s half too bad!  That girl seems as if she would almost reach across after them.  Perhaps they came from the country, and haven’t had any flowers.”

“Thee might take them over some,” said Mrs. Froke, simply.

“O, I shouldn’t dare!  There are other people in the house, and I don’t know their names, or anything.  I wish I could, though.”

“I can,” said Rachel Froke.  “Thee’ll grow tall enough to step over pebbles one of these days.  Never mind; I’ll fetch thee more to-morrow; and thee’ll let the vase go for a while?  Likely they’ve nothing better than a tumbler.”

Rachel Froke went down the stairs, and out along the paved walk, into the street.  She stopped an instant on the curb-stone before she crossed, and looked up at those second story windows.  Hazel watched her.  She held up the vase slightly with one hand, nodding her little gray bonnet kindly, and beckoned with the other.