He came on a still, sunny spring day. The general went to meet him at the station, and while he was gone Eppie made excitement endurable by vigorous action. Again and again she visited the fresh little room overlooking the hills, the garden, the pine-tree boughs, standing in a thoughtful surveyal of its beauties and comforts or darting off to add to them. She herself chose the delightful piece of green soap from the store-cupboard and the books for the table; and she gathered the daffodils in the birch-woods, filling every vase with them, so that the little room with its white walls and hangings of white dimity seemed lighted by clusters of pale, bright flames. When the old fly rumbled at last through the gates and around the drive, Miss Rachel and Miss Barbara were in the doorway, and Eppie stood before them on the broad stone step, Robbie beside her. Eppie was a lithe, sturdy, broad-shouldered child, with russet, sun-streaked hair, dark yet radiant, falling to her waist. She had a pale, freckled face and the woodland eyes of a gay, deep-hearted dog. To-day she wore a straight white frock, and her hair, her frock, dazzled with sunlight. No more invigorating figure could have greeted a jaded traveler. That it was a very jaded traveler she saw at once, while the general bundled out of the fly and handed rugs, dressing-cases, and cages to the maid, making a passage for Gavan’s descent. The boy followed him, casting anxious glances at the cages, and Eppie’s eyes, following his, saw tropical birds in one and in the other a quaint, pathetic little beast--a lemur-like monkey swaddled in flannel and motionless with fear. Its quick, shining eyes met hers for a moment, and she looked away from them with a sense of pity and repulsion. Gavan, as he ascended the steps, looked at once weary, frightened, and composed. He had a white, thin face and thick black hair--the sort of face and hair, Eppie thought, that the wandering prince of one of her own stories, the prince who understood the rooks’ secrets, would have. He was dressed in a long gray traveling-cloak with capes. The eager welcome she had in readiness for him seemed out of place before his gentle air of self-possession, going as it did with the look of almost painful shrinking. She was a little at a loss and so were the aunts, as she saw. They took his hand in turn, they smiled, they murmured vague words of kindness; but they did not venture to kiss him. He did not seem as little a boy as they had expected. The same expression of restraint was on Uncle Nigel’s hearty countenance. The sad boy was frozen and he chilled others.