Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/171

Rh I felt guilty at heart.

"You dear old boy," I exclaimed, "go ahead; I won't go back on you."

We walked slowly up to the door, between two old-fashioned, narrow flower-beds. They were brown and rusty now, but in spring must have been gay, for there were great mats of the moss pink, thickets of phlox, and bushes of flowering almond. Now, the only blossoms left were the old-fashioned "Ladies' Delights," which were still plentiful, and seemed to have been allowed to run at will from one end of the beds to the other. The house was a large two-story house, square, white, with nine windows on the front; on one side of the door stood a scrawny lilac-tree; on the other, a high bush of southern-wood. As Jim lifted the big black knocker, he said, under his breath: "Well, there 's room enough, anyhow. Look at the windows! I wonder what the parson lives in such a big house for, if it is n't on purpose to take us all in."

"Perhaps he don't have the whole of it," said I. At that instant, before the knocker fell, the door was opened, and there stood "Mis' Allen." I had broken a bit of the southern-wood, and was crumpling the sweet-bitter leaves in my fingers as the door opened. To this day I can never smell southern-wood without recalling the picture of Mistress Dorothy Allen as she stood in that door-way.

"No such cheeks," indeed! Well might Mrs