This pretty animal’s look of strangeness to its surroundings, as it gazed about with curiosity, would alone have proclaimed that it was arrived from travel; had not the baggage and appearance of its bearer told the same story.  The boy, also, kept an alert eye forward as he advanced up the street, but it was soon evident that he gazed in search of some particular object.  This object, as the lad finally satisfied himself by scanning it and its neighbours twice over, proved to be the house immediately opposite ours.  It was one of a row of small, old brick residences, with Dutch gable ends toward the street.  Having made sure of its identity, and having reddened a little at the gaze of Madge and me, the young stranger set down his bag with perceptible signs of physical relief, and, keeping in his grasp the basket with the cat, knocked with a seemingly forced boldness—­as if he were conscious of timidity to be overcome—­upon the door.

At that, Madge Faringfield could not help laughing aloud.

It was a light, rippling, little laugh, entirely good-natured, lasting but a moment.  But it sufficed to make the boy turn and look at her and blush again, as if he were hurt but bore no resentment.

Then I, who knew what it was to be wounded by a girl’s laugh, especially Madge’s, thought it time to explain, and called out to the lad: 

“There’s nobody at home there.”

The boy gazed at me at a loss; then, plainly reluctant to believe me, he once more inspected the blank, closed front of the house, for denial or confirmation of my word.  When he next looked back at me, the expression of inquiring helplessness and vague alarm on his face, as if the earth were giving way beneath his feet, was half comical, half pitiful to see.

“It is Mr. Aitken’s house, is it not?” he asked, in a tone low and civil, though it seemed to betray a rapid beating of the heart after a sudden sinking thereof.

“It was,” I replied, “but he has gone back to England, and that house is empty.”

The lad’s dismay now became complete, yet it appeared in no other way than in the forlorn expression of his sharp, pale countenance, and in the unconscious appeal with which his blue eyes surveyed Madge and me in turn.  But in a few moments he collected himself, as if for the necessary dealing with some unexpected castastrophe, and asked me, a little huskily still: 

“When will he come home?”

“Never, to this house, I think.  Another customs officer has come over in his place, but this one lodges at the King’s Arms, because he’s a bachelor.”

The lad cast a final hopeless glance at the house, and then mechanically took a folded letter from an inner pocket, and dismally regarded the name on the back.

“I had a letter for him,” he said, presently, looking again across the street at me and Madge, for the curious Miss Faringfield had walked down from her gateway to my side, that she might view the stranger better.  And now she spoke, in her fearless, good-humoured, somewhat forward way: