isitors!" her companion rejoined.
"But _you_ don't mean to stay ten years," she added, glancing at me.

"Has she a visitor of that sort?" I inquired, perplexed.

"You will see the sort!" said the minister's wife. "She's easily seen;
she generally sits in the front yard. Only take care what you say to
her, and be very sure you are polite."

"Ah, she is so sensitive?"

The minister's wife jumped up and dropped me a curtsey, a most ironical
curtsey.

"That's what she is, if you please. She's a countess!"

And pronouncing this word with the most scathing accent, the little
woman seemed fairly to laugh in the Countess's face. I stood a moment,
staring, wondering, remembering.

"Oh, I shall be very polite!" I cried; and grasping my hat and stick, I
went on my way.

I found Miss Spencer's residence without difficulty. The Baptist church
was easily identified, and the small dwelling near it, of a rusty
white, with a large central chimney-stack and a Virginia creeper, seemed
naturally and properly the abode of a frugal old maid with a taste for
the picturesque. As I approached I slackened my pace, for I had heard
that some one was always sitting in the front yard, and I wished
to reconnoitre. I looked cautiously over the low white fence which
separated the small garden-space from the unpaved street; but I descried
nothing in the shape of a countess. A small straight path led up to the
crooked doorstep, and on either side of it was a little grass-plot,
fringed with currant-bushes. In the middle of the grass, on either side,
was a large quince-tree, full of antiquity and contortions, and beneath
one of the quince-trees were placed a small table and a couple of
chairs. On the table lay a piece of unfinished embroidery and two or
three books in bright-colored paper covers. I went in at the gate and
paused halfway along the path, scanning the place for some farther
token of its occupant, before whom--I could hardly have said why--I
hesitated abruptly to present myself. Then I saw that the poor little
house was very shabby. I felt a sudden doubt of my right to intrude;
for curiosity had been my motive, and curiosity here seemed singularly
indelicate. While I hesitated, a figure appeared in the open doorway and
stood there looking at me. I immediately recognized Caroline Spencer,
but she looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Gently, but
gravely and timidly, I advanced to the doorstep, and then I said, with
an attem