“I think we shall be quite comfortable here,” she said, watching the last piece of furniture pass through the door.  “Where are the children?” The air had the rich softness of summer, and the roving fragrance from the old garden rose-bush by the steps awakened a strange homesickness in her heart—­that mysterious homesickness which the spring gives us for places we have never seen.

“The children are upstairs fixing their rooms,” replied Miss.  Polly, stooping to pluck up a weed by the roots.  “I reckon I’d better go and tell Minnie to begin gettin’ dinner, hadn’t I?”

“Yes, I’ll come in presently.  I hate to leave the air and the roses.”

“I wish we had the whole house, Gabriella.”

“It would be ever so much nicer, because I’m afraid the man on the first floor is dreadfully common.  I don’t like the look of that golden-oak hatrack in the hail.”

“Well, men never did have much taste.  Think of the things your Cousin Jimmy would admire if Miss Pussy didn’t tell him not to.  Do you recollect that paper in your parlour at home?  Now Mr. Jimmy thought that paper downright handsome.  I’ve heard him say so.”

“It was dreadful, but, do you know, I designed a gown last winter in peacock blue like that paper, and it was a tremendous success.  Poor mother, I wish she could have seen it—­peacock blue with an embossed border.”

“You may laugh about it now, but I don’t believe your mother minded it much.  People in old times didn’t let things get on their nerves the way they do to-day.”

She went indoors to attend to the dinner table; and as Gabriella turned back to the steps, she heard the gate slam and a man’s voice exclaim heartily:  “I’ll see you about it to-morrow.”  Then a figure came rapidly up the walk—­a large, free figure, with a buoyant swing, which awoke a trivial and fleeting association in her memory.  Without noticing her, the man stooped for an instant beside the rose-bush, plucked a bud, and held it to his nostrils as he turned to the steps.  His voice, singing a snatch of ragtime which she recognized without recalling the name of it, rang out, gay and powerful, as he approached her.

“I’ve seen him somewhere.  Who can he be?” she thought, and then swiftly, as in a blaze of light, she remembered the May afternoon in West Twenty-third Street, and “Alice,” whom she had wondered about and forgotten.  She had again a vivid impression of bigness, of freshness, and of gray eyes that, reminded her vaguely of the colour of a storm on the sea.

“Good evening!” he remarked with impersonal friendliness as he passed her; and from the quality of his voice she inferred, as she had done on that May afternoon, that he was without culture, probably without education.

He went inside; the door of his front room opened and shut, and after a minute or two the snatch of ragtime floated merrily through his window.  If there was anything on earth she disliked, she reflected impatiently, it was a comic song.