With all her war against the flesh, Miss Hansford had her weaknesses and ambitions, and one of the latter was to know and be known by Mrs. Ralston. This was an easy matter, for there was not a kinder-hearted or more genial woman in the world, and when she heard from her maid that Miss Phebe Hansford was in the drawing-room she went at once to meet her, and by her graciousness of manner put her at her ease and disarmed her of all prejudice there might have been against her. Miss Hansford was taken over the house to see the improvements and given a cup of tea and treated, as she told Mrs. Atwater when describing her call, “as if she and Miss Ralston were hand and glove.” The watermelon was not mentioned until just before Miss Hansford left, when Paul came in, accompanied by Jack Percy, who at sight of the woman sitting up so prim in a high-backed chair, with her far-seeing spectacles on, slunk out of sight. Paul, on the contrary, came forward, and, doffing his cap, offered her his hand. “You have seen my son before?” Mrs. Ralston said, in some surprise, when Paul left the room. “Why, yes. Didn’t he tell you about the melon he brought in place of the one——,” she was going to add “——he stole,” but something in Mrs. Ralston’s manner checked the harsh word before it was uttered. Mrs. Ralston, however, understood, and her face flushed slightly as she replied: “I knew he took your melon, but not that he carried you another. I am very glad. Paul means to be a good boy. I hope you forgave him?” “I did,” Miss Hansford exclaimed, “and I like him, too. I’m cross-grained, I know, but I’ve a soft spot somewhere, and your boy’s touched it and brought me here to see his mother. I hope we’ll be friends. I am a homely old woman with homely ways, and I hain’t anything like this,” glancing around the elegantly furnished drawing-room, “but I’ll be glad to see you any time.” “I will surely come,” Mrs. Ralston said, offering her white hand covered with rings such as Miss Hansford considered it wicked to wear. They did not look quite so sinful on Mrs. Ralston, who ever after was a queen among women as Paul was a king among boys. When Jack Percy’s mother came to the seashore and took him home Paul and Miss Hansford became fast friends. He called her “Aunt Phebe” and ate her ginger cookies and fried cakes and apple turnovers and huckleberry pies, and raced through her yard, and sometimes through her house, with his dog, Sherry, at his heels, upsetting things generally and seldom stopping to put in its place the stone tied in one corner of the netting which was tacked over the door to keep the flies out. This was a fashion followed by many of the cottagers whose doors were too wide to admit of screens. But Paul in his haste did not often think of it, and after a few attempts to make him remember the stone Miss Hansford gave it up and only held her breath when he came in like a whirlwind and out again as rapidly.