“But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess,” laughed Diana.  “She’s an old maid . . . she’s forty-five and quite gray, I’ve heard.”

“Oh, that’s only part of the spell,” asserted Anne confidently.  “At heart she’s young and beautiful still . . . and if we only knew how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again.  But we don’t know how . . . it’s always and only the prince who knows that . . . and Miss Lavendar’s prince hasn’t come yet.  Perhaps some fatal mischance has befallen him . . . though that’s against the law of all fairy tales.”

“I’m afraid he came long ago and went away again,” said Diana.  “They say she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving . . .  Paul’s father . . . when they were young.  But they quarreled and parted.”

“Hush,” warned Anne.  “The door is open.”

The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at the open door.  There was a patter of steps inside and a rather odd little personage presented herself . . . a girl of about fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched “from ear to ear,” and two long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.

“Is Miss Lewis at home?” asked Diana.

“Yes, ma’am.  Come in, ma’am.  I’ll tell Miss Lavendar you’re here, ma’am.  She’s upstairs, ma’am.”

With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls, left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes.  The interior of this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.

The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows, curtained with muslin frills.  All the furnishings were old-fashioned, but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious.  But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature, to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air, was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies, while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have termed “a festal air.”

“Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea,” she whispered.  “There are six places set.  But what a funny little girl she has.  She looked like a messenger from pixy land.  I suppose she could have told us the road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar.  S . . . s . . . sh, she’s coming.”

And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway.  The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared.  They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly spinster as known to their experience . . . a rather angular personage, with prim gray hair and spectacles.  Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar could possibly be imagined.

She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick, and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils.  Beneath it was an almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big soft brown eyes and dimples . . . actually dimples.  She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it . . . a gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.