Then he asked about uncle and my trip, and whether I’d ever been in a city before, and I answered him, trying ever so hard not to be frightened by the great crowds that ran right in front of cars at the crossings. I was quite sure we could kill someone, but we didn’t.

“Nervous?” asked Doctor Crane as we turned up into a quieter street which went past the Walters’ Art Gallery (Doctor Crane told me what it was). I said I wasn’t exactly, but that I expected to see someone killed in the mob through which we had threaded.

He laughed and replied that he didn’t have to do it with a Ford--because he was a doctor. And then we rode quite a distance, although it didn’t seem so, for I was interested, and at last we stopped before a lovely old white house. A little girl of about thirteen stood on the door-step, and as we neared I heard her call: “Mother, she’s come! They’re here! Mother!” And then she stopped yelling into the house and ran down to open the door of the car for me.

Mother!

“I am Mary Elinor Crane,” she said shyly, but she smiled so genuinely that I liked her right away.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “the only girl we have left, and if she marries there’ll be a massacre around here!”

she

And then Mrs. Crane came to the door, and I forgot Mary Elinor and the Doctor. She kissed me and said, “Why, my dear little girl!” and I felt as if I had always known her. “Just like your mother,” she went on, “just like Nelly Randolph--the prettiest girl in the Green Spring Valley!” And I saw that her eyes were too bright, and swimming. And then she changed the subject abruptly and said: “Come in, dear. . . . You must be tired. . . . Ted, have Lucky take those bags up to the blue room”--Lucky was the darkest little coon I ever saw--“and,” she went on, “Mary Elinor, you take Miss Natalie upstairs and see that she has clean towels and has a nice chance to brush up, and then come down to supper.”

“Come on,” said Mary Elinor, as she slipped her arm through mine. And we went up some splendid broad, winding stairs which led to a great upstairs hall. It was the loveliest house I’d ever seen. I could only gasp.

There were dark old pictures in beautifully wide, gently mellowed gilt frames, and funny old-fashioned pieces of furniture standing here and there. I particularly noticed one, and Mary Elinor told me it was a frame on which people of our 

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