directed us: “Turn the corner at the drug store, it’s the third house.”

There it was! White like the others, with a small front yard, bordered on two sides by a neat hedge. A brick walk led up to a narrow front stoop. Our eyes were lifted anxiously to the door as we mounted the steps. It had, I could not suppress the thought, a very closed look. I lifted the knocker with some trepidation; it seemed like an intrusion to make a noise in so silent a place.

It was a feeble knock, but no sooner had it died away when we heard a window raised above us and a voice called, “Go round to the back and wipe your feet on the mat.”

Eve giggled. How I loved her for it!

The grass in the side yard had been freshly mowed and smelled deliciously. “Syringas, too!” Eve inhaled rapturously. “I’m going to sleep out in that lily-of-the-valley bed,” she whispered, “and pretend I’m a dryad!”

“Hush! Here she is.”

A small woman in a big white apron was standing on the back porch. Her eyes were dark and very bright, and her nose had a kind of pinched-in look as if she were smelling of something. Her expression was—well, speculative.

“So here you are!” she said, holding out a bony, work-worn hand. “I guess you’re Sandra. You’ve got the Hutton nose.”

“Have I?” I laughed. And, moved by an impulse for which I was quite unable to account, I stooped and kissed her where her hair was parted flatly on her forehead. “This is my best friend, Eve Fordyce,” I said before she had recovered from her surprise at my salutation.

Eve smiled devastatingly. “Pleased to meet you,” said my relative.

“It was awfully sweet of you to let me come along with Sandy,” Eve said. “I hope we aren’t going to be a lot of bother.”

“Well, I guess everybody’s a bother when it comes to that,” returned Aunt Cal not too ungraciously. “It’s a good deal of bother to live anyway, what with three meals a day winter and summer.”

“Do you know I’ve often thought of that very thing myself,” agreed Eve. “If it wasn’t for eating, what loads of spare time we’d have to do a lot of extra exciting things.”

Aunt Cal looked as if precisely this view of the matter had not occurred to her before. But all she said was, 

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