Susie looked round with astonished eyes--not with so much emotion as they had hoped, but with much astonishment and some pleasure, and perhaps at the bottom of her heart a little amusement at the impressive way in which she was introduced into the little parlour, which did not look anything very remarkable. But presently her eye was caught by something she, too, remembered; some old article which had belonged to the old people even in her time, which brought a flood of associations to her heart: and she suddenly sat down in one of the old chairs and cried a little, thinking of things that were further back than any clear memory John had. How Elly had divined, he said to himself! Her heart had told her, as Elly said! To find how right Elly was, gave John almost more pleasure than to feel that Susie appreciated what he had done. They had taken their first meal together, and she had gone upstairs to arrange her ‘things,’ that first necessity for a woman who has not a maid to do it for her, leaving John sitting in grave but wistful satisfaction in his familiar place. He had been very busy for two days past and was glad to sit still and rest--and he was happy, yet sad in a luxurious delicious melancholy such as is the atmosphere and background of life at a certain stage. He felt a little pang as he looked at the two old chairs, and half regretted for them that they had been brought away out of Elly’s room, and felt for himself that they had a charm, a sort of perfume hanging about them from being so long there, and wished for Elly to tell this to--not Susie, though she was the heroine of the evening. He felt that he wanted to say it to Elly. He wanted to talk to Elly, to have her there--which was impossible. He was very fond of his sister; but it was Elly he wished to communicate his thought to, and whom he longed to see coming in, sitting down--which, as has been said, was impossible. She had been a great deal with him during these preparations of his, helping him with everything, suggesting various little improvements, remembering even he took pleasure in thinking, almost better than he did, how all the things had been. He was sorry those busy days were over--and that she would come no more. But the melancholy of this thought was tempered by the certainty that she must come to see Susie, that Susie being here he would have chances of seeing her continually more easily and sweetly than if he had been himself going to the rectory, where Percy for one was not very cordial. All this was going through his mind when he heard the outer door, an innocent village door which opened from outside, pushed open, and some one enter. Then Percy’s voice said, ‘May I come in?’ with a certain solemnity, John was chilled a little in the fulness of his satisfaction by Percy’s voice.