After a hasty good-by, Nathalie was hurrying across the road, while waving her hand to the sweet, patient face smiling at her from the window. Some twenty minutes later she arrived at Seven Pillars, her eyes happily aglow, as she told her mother of the readings to be, to help lighten the burdens of her new friend, the shut-in. Several days later Nathalie, with her mother, walked slowly down the garden-path, with its border of oldtime hollyhocks and peonies and white stones, to the gate-posts. A step or two, and they stood before the door of the little red house, as the girl, with pleased eyes, cried, “Well, mother, she’s in, for I saw her sitting at the window as we came up the path, so we can get this ordeal over.” But unfortunately she reckoned without her host, for although they knocked and knocked, Nathalie even pounding on the door with her parasol-handle, for she had planned to take a walk after the call, no one came to the door. After a time she peered at the window, but some one had drawn the shades down so that nothing was to be seen. “Mother, she is _so angry_ she just won’t let us in,” cried the young caller with flushed cheeks. “Oh, I think she must be a very disagreeable old lady, and I do not think there is any use in trying to be nice to her.” Mrs. Page had evidently come to the same conclusion, so they slowly turned and retraced their steps back to the house, and in a short space she was seated on the veranda with her darning, as Nathalie started for a walk. As she passed the red house, and caught sight of the silver-haired old lady knitting at the window she quickly turned her head away, determined to ignore her in the future. “And so this is the end of our acquaintance with our next-door neighbor,” she mused ruefully, as she passed on down the road. “Well, it certainly did not prove very progressive. Of course I don’t really care,—she’s just an old lady,—but still I do wish Cynthia Loretto had stayed up in her old studio, and not made trouble for us by her unkind ways.” CHAPTER XI THE RIDE THROUGH THE NOTCH Notwithstanding that the inmates of Seven Pillars were neighbored by a disagreeable old lady, as Nathalie had mentally dubbed the occupant of the red house, the time passed pleasantly to the girl, although she had days when she longed to see Helen, to open her heart to her in confidential mood. But the lonesomeness gradually lessened, occupied as she was with her manifold household cares, her exploring trips, her visits to the Sweet-Pea ladies, and the sometime prowl for the mysterious _It_. To her satisfaction she soon found that by hurrying a little over her morning tasks, she not only had time to read to her friend, and to help Mona at her work, but that she did not have to miss her walks.