The car stopped at the Reynolds’ gate and Elizabeth went in herself with the basket of grapes. The curtains were not drawn, so that she could see Miss Miranda sitting with her work beside the table. She could even see her look up, startled and alarmed as she had been before, when there came a step at the door. She was so calm, so quiet and cheerful in all other matters it was hard to imagine why this one thing should trouble her so. After the basket was delivered, Elizabeth lingered at the door, unwilling to say good night, while Miss Miranda, too, seemed reluctant to have her go. When at last Betsey took her departure and the car moved away from the gate, she found that her wavering doubts, felt so keenly at Aunt Susan’s, had vanished again. She would not be too lonely if she had Miss Miranda, of that she now felt doubly assured; but there was something more. She had an odd, protective feeling for her new friend, as though she were staying at home, not only to carry out her own plans, but to take care of Miss Miranda. There is sometimes a vague knowledge of things that comes without words. It was clear enough to Elizabeth, long afterwards, just what heavy trouble was brooding over the little household of the cottage, and just what part she was destined to play in dispelling it. Yet it was curious indeed, that she should have begun to feel, so early and so distinctly, that here she was really needed and that here she would give, in return for Miss Miranda’s friendship, not only small services but great ones. The sunny garden on the hillside was being planted on the afternoon that she came to the cottage again. She had said good-by to Aunt Susan that morning and had seen her depart in a great flutter of veils and furs and feathers. The train had rolled away carrying with it Betsey’s last vision of snow-capped mountains, sparkling blue seas, tropical shores and white, flower-crowned cliffs. Her mind would still linger, in spite of herself, on the pleasures that she had renounced so that she was glad to find some absorbing diversion and to turn her abundant energy to helping Miss Miranda. The peas were already pushing their pert green noses through the warm soil, and the scattered lettuce plants showed all along the row. Betsey became so entranced with the task of setting out beans that she would have filled the whole garden with them had not Miss Miranda warned her that there must be a little space left for beets and carrots and sweet corn. Old Michael Martin, bent and weatherbeaten, the hero of the tale she had heard on her first visit, was at work spading the far end of the garden. He seemed a silent, crabbed person, who did not like to answer even when spoken to, so that Betsey found him rather disappointing. He would stop his work now and then, however, to hurl a few words of rather bewildering advice at the two among the bean rows.