“Very well, if, like a piece of old china, I keep her quiet on the top shelf.  Baltimore is the bottom shelf, for her, even though she’s with the Priedieus, who will take the kindest care of her.  Hence my haste.  Oh, I can’t wait a minute till I tell you my plans.  Let me splash my dusty face and I’ll plunge in.  I want your advice, your interest, and your—­cooperation!”

“You shall have them all, my dearest girl.  Come upstairs,” and Ellen led the way, Miss Ruston following with a small travelling bag of which she would not give her hostess possession.

“What a dear house!” The guest was throwing rapid glances all about her as she mounted the stairs.  “I should have known that living-room was yours if I hadn’t had your Aunt Lucy’s famous old desk to give me a clue.  O, Len, the very back of you is enchanting!”

Ellen turned to laugh at Charlotte Ruston’s characteristic fervour of expression.  “I remember you are always admiring people’s backs,” she observed.

“Yes, they’re often so much more interesting than their faces.  But yours—­merely gives promise of what the face fulfills!  Forgive me, Len,—­you know when I haven’t seen you for ages I have to tell you what I think of you.  In here?  Oh, what an adorable room!”

It was Ellen’s own.  She was thinking rapidly.  Dr. John Leaver occupied one of her two guest-rooms, Amy Mathewson the other.  She should have to turn Bob out of the bachelor’s room, and send him down to stay with Cynthia.  But Miss Ruston put an end to her planning at once by adding: 

“I can’t even sleep under your roof, Len, for I’ve engaged my berth on the sleeper to-night.  I’m always in such anxiety about Granny when I get her away from her quiet corner.  Now let me make myself clean with all haste, that I may not lose a minute of this happy day with you.”

She was as good as her word, and in five minutes was looking as fresh as the fortunate possessor of much rich and youthful bloom can be at a touch of soap and water.  She gave her hostess a second embrace, laying a cheek like a June rose against Ellen’s more delicately tinted cheek, and murmuring: 

“I never can tell you how I have missed you since that all-conquering husband of yours brought you off up North.  By the way, is that his photograph?”

She was looking over Ellen’s shoulder at a picture in an ivory-and-silver frame upon the dressing-table.  She answered her own question.

“Of course it is.  I’d know by the look of him that he must be Red Pepper Burns.”  She went over and examined the pictured face closely.  “I could make a better picture of him than that,—­I know it without seeing him in the flesh.  What a splendid pair of eyes!  Do they look right down into your inmost thoughts—­or do they see only as far as your liver?  Fine head, good mouth, straight nose, chin like a stone wall!  Goodness! do you never meet up with that chin?”

She looked around at Ellen with mischief in her bright brown eyes.