“I am,” Barry said unexpectedly.  “So if you need—­yeast is it, that women always borrow?”

“Yeast,” she assented laughing.  “I will remember.  And now tell me about trains and things.  Listen!” Her voice and look changed suddenly:  softened, brightened.  “Is that children?” she asked, eagerly.

And a moment later four children, tired, happy and laden with orchard spoils, came around the corner of the house.  Barry presented them as the Carews—­George and Jeanette, a bashful fourteen and a self-possessed twelve, and Dick, who was seven—­and his own small dusty son, Billy Valentine, who put a fat confiding hand in the strange lady’s as they all went down to the gate together.

“You are my Joanna’s age, Jeanette,” said Mrs. Burgoyne, easily.  “I hope you will be friends.”

“Who will I be friends with?” said little Billy, raising blue expectant eyes.  “And who will George?”

“Why, I hope you will be friends with me,” she answered laughing; “and I will be so relieved if George will come up sometimes and help me with bonfires and about what ought to be done in the stable.  You see, I don’t know much about those things.”  At this moment George, hoarsely muttering that he wasn’t much good, he guessed, but he had some good tools, fell deeply a victim to her charms.

Mrs. Carew came out of her own gate as they came up, and there was time for a little talk, and promises, and goodbyes.  Then Barry took Mrs. Burgoyne to the station, and lifted his hat to the bright face at the window as the train pulled out in the dusk.  He went slowly to his office from the train and attacked the litter of papers and clippings on his desk absent-mindedly.  Once he said half aloud, his big scissors arrested, his forehead furrowed by an unaccustomed frown, “We were only kids then; and they all thought I was the one who was going to do something big.”

CHAPTER IV

Barry appeared at Mrs. Carew’s house a little after midnight to find the card-players enjoying a successful supper, and the one topic of conversation the possible sale of Holly Hall.  Barry, suspected of having news of it, was warmly welcomed by the tired, bright-eyed women and the men in their somewhat rumpled evening clothes, and supplied with salad and coffee.

“Is she really coming, Barry?” demanded Mrs. Lloyd eagerly.  “And how soon?  We have been saying what Wonders could be done for the Hall with a little money.”

“The price didn’t seem to worry her,” said George Carew.

“Oh, she’s coming,” Barry assured them; “you can consider it settled.”

“Good!” said old Mrs. Apostleman in her deep, emphatic voice.  “She’ll have to make the house over, of course; but the stable ought to make a very decent garage.  Mark my words, me dears, ye’ll see some very startling changes up there, before the summer’s out.”

“The house could be made colonial,” submitted Mrs. Adams, “or mission, for that matter.”