Unlocking the door, he went back to the window and looked across at the long row of houses, as alike as shriveled peas in a dry pod, and down on the snow-covered streets. Brilliantly the sun touched here and there a bit of cornice below a dazzling gleaming roof, and threw rays of rainbow light on window-pane and iron rail, outlined or hidden under frozen foam; and the dirt and ugliness of the usual day were lost in the white hush of mystery. Not for long would there be transforming effect of the storm, however. Already the snow was being shoveled from door-steps and sidewalks, and the laughter of the boys as they worked, the scraping of their shovels, the rumble of wagon-wheels, which were making deep brown ruts in the middle of the street, reached him with the muffled sound of something far away, and, watching, he missed no detail of what was going on below. "Goodness gracious! I've almost cried myself to death! And she found you--found you!" Van Landing turned sharply. The door was open, though he had not heard the knock, and with a spring Carmencita was beside him, holding his hands and dancing as if demented with a joy no longer to be held in restraint. "Oh, Mr. Van, I've almost died for fear I wouldn't find you in time! And you're here at Mother McNeil's, and all yesterday I looked and looked, and I couldn't remember your last name, and neither could Father. And Miss Frances was away until night, and I never prayed so hard and looked so hard in my life! Oh, Mr. Van, if you are a stranger, I love you, and I'm so glad you're found!" She stopped for breath, and Van Landing, stooping, lifted Carmencita's face and kissed it. "You are my dear friend, Carmencita." His voice, as his hands, was a bit shaky. "I, too, am very glad--and grateful. Will you ask her to come, ask her to let me see her? I cannot wait any longer." "You'll have to." Carmencita's eyes were big and blue in sudden seriousness. "The Little Big Sisters have their tree to-night, and she's got a million trillion things to do to-day, and she's gone out. She's awful glad you're better, though. I asked her, and she said she was. And I asked her why she didn't marry you right straight away, or to-morrow if she didn't have time to-day, and--" "You did what, Carmencita?" "That. I asked her that. What's the use of wasting time? I told her you'd like a wife for a Christmas gift very much, if she was the wife. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you really and truly rather have her than anything else?" Van Landing turned and looked out of the window. The child's eyes and earnest, eager face could not be met in the surge of hot blood which swept over him, and his throat grew tight. All his theories and ideas were becoming but confused upheaval in the manipulations of fate, or what you will, that were bringing strange things to pass, and he no longer could think clearly or feel calmly. He must get away before he saw Frances. "Wouldn't you, Mr. Van?"