"You see," said Roberta as the door closed behind Gay, "I wouldn't tease her if she'd confess anything, but she won't. Kitty Walton thinks I've guessed right too. She said that from the moment she heard about their romantic meeting she was sure something would come of it." "Oh, tell me about it," urged Mary. "I know Doctor Alex so well that I can't help being interested." "And do you know a place in Lloydsboro Valley called the Log Cabin?" asked Roberta. "A fine country home built of logs and furnished with beautiful old heirlooms? Gay's sister, Mrs. Harcourt, rented it one summer." "Indeed I do know it," assented Mary. "It is a fascinating place, with a big outside fire-place on the porch, and the front is covered with a climbing rose. We used to pass it often." "Well, Kitty says that the day after the Harcourts took possession, Gay put a ladder against the front of the house and climbed up on it to hang a mirror on the outside of her window-sill, the way they do in Holland. It was one she had brought all the way from Amsterdam. And while she was up on the ladder, looking like a picture, of course, with the roses all about her and the sunshine turning her hair to gold, Dr. Shelby came by on horseback. She saw him in the mirror and the girls teased her about it--called it her Lady of Shalott mirror and him her Knight of the Looking-glass. Kitty says he was devotion itself to her all summer." What more she might have revealed was interrupted by Gay's return. She tossed an armful of dainty muslin and lace on the bed, and for a few moments all three gave their undivided attention to the trying-on process. "I must confess it doesn't look as if it were fitted to you in perfect health," confessed Roberta, "but it's one of those soft clinging things that doesn't have to fit like a glove. I can pin it up on you to make it look all right, and it's so pretty with all that fine lace and embroidery that it'll pass muster anywhere." Gay sat down to make some slight alteration in the girdle, while Roberta invited Mary to a seat in front of the dressing-table, proposing to try her skill on her as a hair-dresser. It was all so delightfully intimate and friendly, just such a situation as Mary had longed for in her dream-castle building, that she even felt at liberty to grow a little personal with Roberta. She peeped out through the hair which now hung over her face, to watch Roberta's face reflected in the mirror opposite. "Do you know," she remarked with a mischievous glance, like a skye terrier peeping through its bangs, "that I've actually lain awake nights, wondering if you'd been persuaded yet to give up that 'adorable little curl.'" Roberta's mouth opened wide in astonishment, and she dropped the comb with which she was parting Mary's hair. "How spooky!" she cried. "I was just thinking about that myself. Who in the world told you anything about that?"