But he was a boy again as he made the tea, served her, and sat down with his own cup. Alice, too, was a younger girl than she would have been if she had never known Anna Miller. They dallied happily over the ceremony and afterwards went to the top of the stair so that Alice might see the change in the upper chamber, which was as wonderful as that below. The upper room, indeed, with its tent roof, beams, rafters and brick chimney, its window at either end and its built-in benches was more attractive than the lower. Alice rather hoped John Converse would suggest their sitting there, but he did not, and they returned to their chairs in the lower apartment to begin finally upon the real business of the afternoon. “I don’t really know how to start out,” Alice remarked. “The people I know best are Miss Penny and the Miller family.” “In my day there were no Millers in Farleigh--except the moth millers,--dusty-millers, we used to call them. I remember Miss Penny, however,--a little old maid who always came to church. She drove a fat pony. I suppose that is dead long ago?” “I’m learning to drive him. I feed him sugar every day,” said Alice. “But I am wasting time. Suppose you ask me questions.” “Well, suppose you tell me a bit more about that Cartwright fellow you mentioned yesterday.” Alice paled. She didn’t want to think of Dick Cartwright now. “I was all wrong,” she said in a low, pained voice. “He wasn’t good. He was--O, a dreadful man.” “Why Miss Lorraine! what do you mean?” he asked. And she thought he had noticed her secret pain. “I can’t tell you what he did. Mr. Langley told me in confidence and I really ought not to say anything,” she returned sadly. “Mr. Langley’s the only one who--well, he’s very anxious that this Richard Cartwright should be forgotten.” “But I thought--didn’t you tell me yesterday that Mr. Langley was this man’s friend?” “O yes. But this is on account of the son, Reuben. He’s a fine boy, everyone says, and he’s in college. Mr. Langley doesn’t want him to know how bad his father was. And he doesn’t want people to be thinking and talking of him for fear--well, he says it is best that he be forgotten.” “I told you I knew Mr. Langley once. I should have thought of him as being faithful to the end of things,” he said bitterly. “He was faithful to the end of things,” the girl rejoined warmly. “He----” “Nonsense. There’s no such thing to-day as faithfulness,” he declared bitterly. Afterwards, as she lay in her bed at night--Alice remembered Enoch Arden and wondered if he had learned of his wife’s unfaith and that had made him so bitter. At this moment, however, the girl was too wrought up to think of aught but the matter under discussion. “There is, too. There is--ever so much!” she cried hotly. “Not at all. One faces this way--a tiny breath of wind, and round goes the weather-cock!”