“No, I’m not ill, but I don’t like Archibald to pick up acquaintances I know nothing about.”

“I reckon if you’re goin’ to sample all Archibald’s acquaintances, you’ll have a job on your hands.  You ain’t gone an’ taken a dislike to Mr. O’Hara for nothin’, have you?”

“Oh, no, but I have to be careful about the children.  Suppose he should begin speaking to Fanny?” She had been vividly aware of the man as he passed, and the sensation had provoked her.  “If it wasn’t for Alice, I shouldn’t have given him another thought,” she told herself savagely.  “Imagine me at my age blushing because a strange man spoke to me in the street!”

“You needn’t worry about his admirin’ Fanny,” replied Miss Polly, in her matter-of-fact manner, while she lifted the green watering-pot.  “He was on the steps when she set out for school this mornin’, an’ he didn’t notice her any more than he did me.  Fanny ain’t the sort he takes notice of, I could see that in a minute.”

“Then he must be blind.”  There was a resentful sound in Gabriella’s voice.  “It embarrasses me when I get on a street car with her because the men stare so.”

“Well, he didn’t stare.  But it’s a mighty good thing that all men haven’t got the same kind of eyes, ain’t it?  What I could never make out was why men ever marry women who haven’t got curly hair, an’ yet they do it every day—­they go right straight out an’ do it with their wits about ’em.”

The front door opened suddenly, and the man came out again, and, descended the walk with the springy step Gabriella had noticed at their first meeting.  Notwithstanding his size, he moved with the lightness and agility of a boy, and without looking at him she could see, as she bent over the flower-bed, that he had the look of exuberant vitality which accompanies perfect physical condition.  Without meaning to, without knowing why she did it, she glanced up quickly and met his eyes.

“So you are making a garden?” he remarked, and stopped beside the freshly turned flower-bed.  Against the gray twilight the red of his hair was like a dark flame, and the vivid colour appeared to intensify the sanguine glow in his face, the steady gaze of his eyes, and the cheerful heartiness of his voice.

“He is cyclonic,” she said to herself.  “Yes, that is the word—­he is cyclonic—­but he isn’t a gentleman.”

“It’s a pity to let the yard run to waste,” she responded, with an imperiousness which took Miss Polly’s breath away, though it left the irrepressible O’Hara still buoyantly gay and kind.

“Now it takes a woman to think of that,” he observed with an off-hand geniality which she felt was directed less toward herself than toward an impersonal universe.  “I like to look at that old rose-bush when it is in bloom, but the idea”—­(he pronounced it idee)—­“of planting anything would never have occurred to me.”

Gabriella’s lips closed firmly, while she sprinkled the earth with an air of patient finality which made Miss Polly think of Mrs. Carr on one of her neuralgic days.