She looked haughty, not humbled, when she took her seat opposite her critic at the tea-table. "A nice companion," she was saying over to herself. The very phrase, borrowed, as it was, from Aunt Sarah's vocabulary, seemed to her seasoned with contempt. She kept down fire and scorn, however, when Mr. Benson accosted her with the tritest of remarks upon the probable heat of the day in town as contrasted with the invigorating breeze, with its faint, delicious sea flavor, that rustled the grapevines and fluttered the white curtains at the dining-room door and windows. Her answer was not exactly gracious, but it advanced the one tempting step beyond a mere reply. Thus was the ice broken, and for the rest of the meal, Aunt Sarah and "Uncle Nathan"--as he requested his nieces to style him--had respite from the duty of active entertainment, so far as conversation went. To Sarah's surprise, Mr. Benson talked to her almost as he would have done to another man. He spoke of notable persons, places, and books--things of which she had heard and read--without affectation of reserve or a shade of pretension; and to her rejoinders--brief and constrained for awhile--then, as she forgot herself in her subject, pertinent, earnest, salient, he gave more than courteous heed. It was the unaffected interest of an inquirer; the entire attention of one who felt that he received more than he gave. They parted for the night with a bow and a smile that was with each a mute acknowledgment of pleasure derived from the companionship of the other; and if neither looked forward to the meeting of the morrow as a renewal of congenial intercourse, both carried to their rest the effects of an agreeable surprise in the events of the evening. CHAPTER IV. A week had passed since the arrival of the city nieces at the farmhouse. An early tea, one of Aunt Sarah's generous and appetizing repasts, was over; and through the garden, out at the gate that terminated the middle walk, and across the strip of meadow-land, danced Charley and Jeannie, followed at a more sedate pace by Philip Benson and Sarah. Seven days' rustication had wrought a marked change in the town-bred girl. There was a lighter bound in her step, and in her cheek a clear, pink glow, while her eyes looked softly, yet brightly, from out the shadow of her gypsy hat, a look of half surprise, half confidence in her companion's face. "One week ago," he was saying, "how firmly I made up my mind that you and I could never be anything but strangers to each other! How I disliked you for coming down here to interfere with my liberty and leisure!" "But even then you thought that I would prove a 'nice companion for Aunt Sarah'--perceived my suitableness to her society," was the demure reply. "Who told you that I said so?"