“Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to.  You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Dent.

Then Rebecca started.  “There she is!” she declared in a trembling, exultant voice.  Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.

“She isn’t as late as I thought she’d be,” said Mrs. Dent, and again that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again it settled into that stony impassiveness.

Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open.  “Where is she?” she asked presently.

“I guess she’s stopped to take off her hat in the entry,” suggested Mrs. Dent.

Rebecca waited.  “Why don’t she come?  It can’t take her all this time to take off her hat.”

For answer Mrs. Dent rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the door.

“Agnes!” she called.  “Agnes!” Then she turned and eyed Rebecca.  “She ain’t there.”

“I saw her pass the window,” said Rebecca in bewilderment.

“You must have been mistaken.”

“I know I did,” persisted Rebecca.

“You couldn’t have.”

“I did.  I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her in the glass there”—­she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard opposite—­“and then the shadow passed the window.”

“How did she look in the glass?”

“Little and light-haired, with the light hair kind of tossing over her forehead.”

“You couldn’t have seen her.”

“Was that like Agnes?”

“Like enough; but of course you didn’t see her.  You’ve been thinking so much about her that you thought you did.”

“You thought you did.”

“I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been mistaken.  She didn’t come in, or we would have seen her before now.  I knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie Slocum’s, anyhow.”

When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned.  Rebecca had resolved that she would not retire until the girl came, but she was very tired, and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish.  Besides, Mrs. Dent suggested that Agnes might go to the church social with Addie Slocum.  When Rebecca suggested that she be sent for and told that her aunt had come, Mrs. Dent laughed meaningly.

“I guess you’ll find out that a young girl ain’t so ready to leave a sociable, where there’s boys, to see her aunt,” said she.

“She’s too young,” said Rebecca incredulously and indignantly.

“She’s sixteen,” replied Mrs. Dent; “and she’s always been great for the boys.”

“She’s going to school four years after I get her before she thinks of boys,” declared Rebecca.

“We’ll see,” laughed the other woman.

After Rebecca went to bed, she lay awake a long time listening for the sound of girlish laughter and a boy’s voice under her window; then she fell asleep.

The next morning she was down early.  Mrs. Dent, who kept no servants, was busily preparing breakfast.