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“Thank you, Miss Carrington,” said Richard. “You are kind. And you are not to be reckoned one of the world which you imagine is hunting me down; you are my neighbour. I shall be grateful to be allowed to come to see the book, and you.”

He spoke with lovable deference, pitying her as a lonely old woman. Miss Carrington could not hide from his blind eyes and keen intuition that this was what she was.

“Kit, my dear, I am glad to find that you have met Mr. Latham; it was but the other day we were saying that you should know him, if he wouldn’t mind too much being bothered with a lad like you. Little namesake Anne, how do you do, my dear?” Miss Carrington graciously extended her greetings.

“I am quite well, thank you, Miss Carrington. You have two namesakes here now,” said little Anne.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Carrington! May I present to you Miss Dallas? As little Anne says, she is another namesake of yours, an Anne,” said Richard Latham.

“Delighted to meet you, my dear,” said Miss Carrington, graciously, so graciously that Kit’s experience gave him forebodings. “You must be the happy girl of whom I’ve heard, who helps Mr. Latham to enrich us all? And I read your clever explanation of his poem, ‛The Mole.’”