“Why, dear lady, you are very kind!  Sure there will be no risk of wearing out a welcome?  And I have no letter of introduction.”

“You can’t even dent the welcome at Miss Jenkins’s house.  It has been forged with kindness and polished with love, and we wouldn’t have time to read a letter of introduction if you had one.  Please come right away.”

Our visitor stood voicing his thanks and bidding us adieu when the tuneful gong at the front door was struck by no uncertain hand.

The setting sun wrapped “The House of the Misty Star” in a veil of purple, shot with pink.  The subdued radiance crept into the room and covered its shabbiness with a soft glory, the paper door slid open and, framed in the tender twilight, stood Zura Wingate.

“I’ve come—­” she began, then stopped.

The unfinished speech still parting her lips, with hair wind-blown and face aglow, she gazed in surprise at Page Hanaford, and he, bending slightly forward, gazed back at the girl, who radiated youth and all its glorious freedom in every movement.

The silence was brief, but intense.  Then Jane Gray gave vent to a long ecstatic “Oh-h-h-h!” I made haste to welcome and introduce Zura.

“I can’t stop,” she said when I offered her a chair and refreshment; and she added rather breathlessly:  “I started for this house at noon; side-tracked and went sailing.  Just come to say thank you very much, but I don’t care for any lessons in English or manners, and I won’t have any kind old grandpa interfering with my affairs.  Now I must hustle.  If I don’t, there’ll be an uprising of my ancestors.  Good-by.”

She went as suddenly as she had come.  It was as though a wild sea-bird had swept through the room, leaving us startled, but refreshed.

From the shadows near the door came Page Hanaford’s half-humorous query, “Do these visions have a habit of appearing in your doorway, Miss Jenkins, or how much of what I saw was real?”

“Zura Wingate is the realest girl I know, Mr. Hanaford.”  He listened intently to the short history of the girl I gave him, made no comment, asked no questions, but said good-night very gently and went out into the dusk.

Jane stood looking into the fire.  Tightly clasping her hands across her thin chest and closing her eyes, she murmured delightedly, “Oh, the sweet darlings!”

I did not ask whether she referred to our late visitors or something in her menagerie.

I was in a whirl of thought myself.  I had lost a pupil; my purse was leaner than ever, my responsibilities heavier; yet intangible joys were storming my old heart, and it was athrill with visions of youth and hope and love, although I saw them through windows doubly barred and locked.

V

A CALL AND AN INVITATION