The vision apparently did not want to be remote, for it came down the steps in a little, headlong rush, casting a pair of gloves to one side and a cape to the other, and caught hold of both Scotty's hands. "_Scotty_! Oh, oh, Scotty, _dear_!" it cried; and then it was no longer an unapproachable heroine from a story-book, but just Isabel; Isabel, his old chum, and something more, something strangely wonderfully new. Scotty did not return her welcome with the warmth he would have shown a few years earlier. He stood gazing down at her as if in a dream, and then the red came up under the dark tan of his cheek and overspread his face. He dropped her hands and looked around hastily, as if he wanted to escape. But Isabel dragged him up the garden path in her old way, deluging him with questions for which she never waited an answer. She had seen Granny Malcolm and Betty and Peter, and she had been afraid he wasn't coming. And, oh, wasn't it an awfully long time since she had seen any of them? And didn't he think he was very unkind not to have answered her last two letters? And she had been away at school all this endless time, not home to the Grange even in the summer! And, oh, how glad she was to get back! And how he had grown! Why, he was a giant! And had he missed her? She had missed him just awfully, for Harold was away all the time now. And wasn't it just too perfectly lovely for anything that Kirsty and Jimmie were getting married, and that he and she were together at the wedding? Scotty stood and listened to these ecstatic outpourings, his head swimming. He was enveloped in a rose-coloured mist, a mist in which blue velvet and golden hair and dancing eyes surrounded and dazzled him. One moment he was a child again, and his little playmate had come back, and the next he was a man and Isabel was the lady of romance. And while he stood in this delightful daze someone came and took the vision away; he thought it was Mary Lauchie, but was not sure. When she had disappeared into the new house he awoke sufficiently to notice that Monteith was standing at the door regarding him with twinkling eyes, and for the second time that afternoon he blushed.