“They look as if they were brimfull of stories!” Hazel cried.  “O, if I could only carry it home to show to the Kincaids!”

“You may,” said Mrs. Geoffrey, as simply, in her turn, as if she were lending a copy of “Robinson Crusoe;’ never letting the child guess by a breath of hesitation the value of what she had asked.

“And tell me more about these Kincaids.  They are friends of yours?”

“Yes; we’ve known them all winter.  They live right opposite, and sit in the windows, drawing and writing.  Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms.  The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa.  Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over.  She cooks with a little gas-stove.  I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money.  She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the floor; and then she comes over into her parlor, she says, and sits by the window.  It’s a kind of a play all the time.”

“And Mr. Kincaid?”

“Dorris says he might have been rich by this time, if he had gone into his Uncle James’s office in New York.  Mr. James Kincaid is a broker, and buys gold.  But Kenneth says gold stands for work, and if he ever has any he’ll buy it with work.  He wants to do some real thing.  Don’t you think that’s nice of him?”

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Geoffrey.  “And Dorris is that bright girl who wanted thirteen things, and rhymed them into ‘Crambo?’ Mr. Geoffrey told me.”

“Yes, ma’am; Dorris can do almost anything.”

“I should like to see Dorris, sometime.  Will you bring her here, Hazel?”

Hazel’s little witch-rod felt the almost impassible something in the way.

“I don’t know as she would be brought,” she said.

Mrs. Geoffrey laughed.

“You have an instinct for the fine proprieties, without a bit of respect for any conventional fences,” she said.  “I’ll ask Dorris.”

“Then I’m sure she’ll come,” said Hazel, understanding quite well and gladly the last three words, and passing over the first phrase as if it had been a Greek motto, put there to be skipped.

“Ada has stopped practicing,” said Mrs. Geoffrey, who had undertaken the entertainment of her little guest during her daughter’s half hour of music.  “She will be waiting for you now.”

Hazel instantly jumped up.

But she paused after three steps toward the door, to say gently, looking back over her shoulder with a shy glance out of her timidly clear eyes,—­

“Perhaps,—­I hope I haven’t,—­stayed too long!”

“Come back, you little hazel-sprite!” cried Mrs. Geoffrey; and when she got her within reach again, she put her hands one each side of the little blushing, gleaming face, and kissed it, saying,—­

“I don’t think,—­I’m slow, usually, in making up my mind about people, big or little,—­but I don’t think you can stay too long,—­or come too often, dear!”