Another negro, not quite as venerable as the coachman, opened the door and took their bags.  He explained that Mrs. Owen (he called her “Mis’ Sally”) had been obliged to attend a meeting of some board or other, but would return shortly.  The guests’ rooms were ready and he at once led the way upstairs, where a white maid met them.

Professor Kelton explained that he must go down into the city on some errands, but that he would be back shortly, and Sylvia was thus left to her own devices.

It was like a story book to arrive at a strange house and be carried off to a beautiful room, with a window-seat from which one could look down into the most charming of gardens.  She opened her bag and disposed her few belongings and was exploring the bathroom wonderingly (for the bath at home was an affair of a tin tub to which water was carried by hand) when a maid appeared with a glass of lemonade and a plate of cakes.

It was while she munched her cakes and sipped the cool lemonade in the window-seat with an elm’s branches so close that she could touch them, and wondered how near to this room her grandfather had been lodged, and what the mistress of the house was like, that Mrs. Owen appeared, after the lightest tap on the high walnut door.  Throughout her life Sylvia will remember that moment when she first measured Mrs. Owen’s fine height and was aware of her quick, eager entrance; but above all else the serious gray eyes that were so alive with kindness were the chief item of Sylvia’s inventory.

“I thought you were older,—­or younger!  I didn’t know you would be just like this!  I didn’t know just when you were coming or I should have tried to be at home—­but there was a meeting,—­there are so many things, child!”

Mrs. Owen did not sigh at the thought of her burdens, but smiled quite cheerfully as though the fact of the world’s being a busy place was wholly agreeable.  She sat down beside Sylvia in the window-seat and took one of the cakes and nibbled it while they talked.  Sylvia had never been so wholly at ease in her life.  It was as though she had been launched into the midst of an old friendship, and she felt that she had conferred the greatest possible favor in consenting to visit this house, for was not this dear old lady saying,—­

“You see, I’m lonesome sometimes and I almost kidnap people to get them to visit me.  I’m a terribly practical old woman.  If you haven’t heard it I must tell you the truth—­I’m a farmer!  And I don’t let anybody run my business.  Other widows have to take what the lawyers give them; but while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I’m going to handle my own money.  We women are a lot of geese, I tell you, child!  I’m treasurer of a lot of things women run, and I can see a deficit through a brick wall as quick as any man on earth.  Don’t you ever let any man vote any proxy for you—­you tell ’em you’ll attend the stockholders’ meetings yourself, and when you go, kick!”