Griswold, waiting on the porch while Doctor Farnham fitted his key, had a nerve-tingling shiver of apprehension when the latch yielded with a click and he found himself under the hall lantern formally shaking hands with the statuesque young woman of the many imaginings. It gave him a curious thrill of mingled terror and joy to find her absolutely unchanged. Having, for his own part, lived through so many experiences since that final glimpse of her standing on the saloon-deck guards of the _Belle Julie_ at St. Louis, the distance in time seemed almost immeasurable. "You are very welcome to Home Nook, Mr. Griswold; we have been hearing about you for many weeks," she was saying when he had relinquished the firm hand and was hanging his coat and hat on the hall-rack. And then, with a half-embarrassed laugh: "I am afraid we are dreadful gossips; all Wahaska has been talking about you, you know, and wondering how it came to acquire you." "It hasn't acquired anything very valuable," was the guest's modest disclaimer, its readiness arising out of a grateful easing of strains now that the actual face-to-face ordeal had safely passed its introductory stage. "And you mustn't say a word against your charming little city, Miss Farnham," he went on. "It is the friendliest, most hospitable----" The doctor's daughter was interrupting with an enthusiastic show of applause. "Come on out to dinner, both of you," she urged; and then to Griswold: "I want you to say all those nice things to Aunt Fanny, and as many more as you can think of. She has never admitted for a single moment that Wahaska can be compared with any one of a dozen New Hampshire villages she could name." In the progress to the cozy, home-like dining-room, Griswold found himself at once in an atmosphere of genuine comfort and refinement; the refinement which speaks of generations of good breeding chastened and purified by the limitations of a slender purse; in the present instance the purse of the good little doctor whose attempted charity in the matter of his own fee was fresh in the mind of the castaway. Griswold had the writing craftsman's ingathering eye: he saw that the furnishings were frugally well-worn, that the sitting-room rug was country-woven, and that the spotless dining-room napery was soft and pliable with age. The contrast between the Farnham home and the ornate mansion three streets away on the lake front was strikingly apparent; as cleanly marked as that between Margery Grierson and the sweetly serene and conventional young person who was introducing him to her aunt across the small oval dining-table.