“I don’t see how you’ll ever get acquainted with him,” said Felicity.  “He never goes anywhere except to church.  He just stays home and reads books when he isn’t working.  Mother says he is a perfect hermit.”

“I’ll manage it somehow,” said the Story Girl—­and we had no doubt that she would.  “But I must wait until I’m a little older, for he wouldn’t tell the secret of the west room to a little girl.  And I mustn’t wait till I’m too old, for he is frightened of grown-up girls, because he thinks they laugh at his awkwardness.  I know I will like him.  He has such a nice face, even if he is awkward.  He looks like a man you could tell things to.”

“Well, I’d like a man who could move around without falling over his own feet,” said Felicity.  “And then the look of him!  Uncle Roger says he is long, lank, lean, narrow, and contracted.”

“Things always sound worse than they are when Uncle Roger says them,” said the Story Girl.  “Uncle Edward says Jasper Dale is a very clever man and it’s a great pity he wasn’t able to finish his college course.  He went to college two years, you know.  Then his father died, and he stayed home with his mother because she was very delicate.  I call him a hero.  I wonder if it is true that he writes poetry.  Mrs. Griggs says it is.  She says she has seen him writing it in a brown book.  She said she couldn’t get near enough to read it, but she knew it was poetry by the shape of it.”

“Very likely.  If that blue silk dress story is true, I’d believe anything of him,” said Felicity.

We were near Golden Milestone now.  The house was a big, weather-gray structure, overgrown with vines and climbing roses.  Something about the three square windows in the second story gave it an appearance of winking at us in a friendly fashion through its vines—­at least, so the Story Girl said; and, indeed, we could see it for ourselves after she had once pointed it out to us.

We did not get into the house, however.  We met the Awkward man in his yard, and he gave us a quarter apiece for our library.  He did not seem awkward or shy; but then we were only children, and his foot was on his native heath.

He was a tall, slender man, who did not look his forty years, so unwrinkled was his high, white forehead, so clear and lustrous his large, dark-blue eyes, so free from silver threads his rather long black hair.  He had large hands and feet, and walked with a slight stoop.  I am afraid we stared at him rather rudely while the Story Girl talked to him.  But was not an Awkward Man, who was also a hermit and kept blue silk dresses in a locked room, and possibly wrote poetry, a legitimate object of curiosity?  I leave it to you.

When we got away we compared notes, and found that we all liked him—­and this, although he had said little and had appeared somewhat glad to get rid of us.

“He gave us the money like a gentleman,” said the Story Girl.  “I felt he didn’t grudge it.  And now for Mr. Campbell.  It was on his account I put on my red silk.  I don’t suppose the Awkward Man noticed it at all, but Mr. Campbell will, or I’m much mistaken.”