“I am much obliged,” said John shivering.  He was alone, but wet as he was the place captured an ever active imagination.  He looked about him as he stood before the roaring fire.  To the right was an open library, to the left a drawing-room rarely used, the hall being by choice the favoured sitting-room.  The dining-room was built out from the back of the hall, whence up a broad stairway Leila had gone.  The walls were hung with Indian painted robes, Sioux and Arapahoe weapons, old colonial rifles, and among them portraits of three generations of Penhallows.  Many older people had found interesting the strange adornment of the walls, where amid antlered trophies of game, buffalo heads and war-worn Indian relics, could be read something of the owner’s tastes and history.  John stood by the fire fascinated.  Like many timid boys, he liked books of adventure and to imagine himself heroic in situations of peril.

“It’s all right.  Come up,” cried Leila from the stair.  “Your trunk’s there now.  There’s a fine fire.”

Forgetful of the cold ride and of the snow down his back, he was standing before the feathered head-dress of a Sioux Chief and touching the tomahawk below it.  He turned as she spoke.  “Those must be scalp-locks—­three.”  He saw the prairie, the wild pursuit—­saw them as she could not.  He went after her upstairs, the girl talking, the boy rapt, lost in far-away battles on the plains.

“This is your room.  See what a nice fire.  You can dry yourself.  Your trunk is here already.”  She lighted two candles.  “We dine at half-past six.”

“Thank you; I am very much obliged,” he said, thinking what a mannerless girl.

Leila closed the door and stood still a moment.  Then she exclaimed, “Well, I never!  What will Uncle Jim say?” She listened a moment.  No one was in the hall.  Then she laughed, and getting astride of the banister-rail made a wild, swift and perilous descent, alighting at the foot in the hall, and readjusting her short skirts as she heard her aunt and uncle on the porch.  “I was just in time,” she exclaimed.  “Wouldn’t I have caught it!”

The Squire, as the village called him, would have applauded this form of coasting, but Aunt Ann had other views.  “Well!” he said as they came in, “what have you done with your young man?”

Now he was for Leila anything but a man or manly, but she was a loyal little lady and unwilling to expose the guest to Uncle Jim’s laughter.  “He’s all right,” she said, “but Billy upset the sleigh.”  She was longing to tell about that ball in the stable, but refrained.

“So Billy upset you; and John, where is he?”

“He’s upstairs getting dried.”

“It is rather a rough welcome,” remarked her aunt.

“He lost his cap and his cane,” said Leila.

“His cane!” exclaimed her uncle, “his cane!”

“I must see him,” said his wife.

“Better let him alone, Ann.”  But as usual she took her own way and went upstairs.  She came down in a few minutes, finding her husband standing before the fire—­an erect, soldierly figure close to forty years of age.