rows
of Kirsty's asters he caught sight of his friend standing in the
doorway of the new house, and gave a gay whistle. Monteith looked up
quickly, but instead of answering he turned to someone inside the house.

"Here he is at last," he called, "come and see if you think he's grown
any."

And the same instant a vision flashed into the little doorway, a vision
that nearly took away Scotty's breath--a tall young lady in a blue
velvet gown with a sweet, laughing face and a crown of golden hair
overshadowed by a big plumed hat, a lady who looked as if she had just
stepped out of a book of romance; a high-born princess, very remote and
unapproachable, and yet, somehow, strangely, enchantingly familiar.

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 wa