"Why, Mercy! I never looked for you in this storm!" exclaimed Molly, hastening to undo the door, and admit the whitened, dishevelled figure of a girl about her own age, but bearing too much resemblance to Reuben Hetherford for beauty, although his scant red locks had developed upon his sister's head into an abundant chevelure of deep auburn, the eyes to a pair of blue orbs twice the size of his, and his thin lips to a pretty, if somewhat shrewish, mouth. Still the family resemblance, the intention of the face, was too marked to allow Mary Wilder, at least, to admire it; and her manner, though courteous, was certainly a little cool, as she relieved her visitor of her snow-laden scarlet cloak and hood, and placed a chair for her beside the fire.
"So you didn't expect me?" began the visitor, drawing the long over-stockings from her feet, and extending them to the cheerful blaze. "Well, mother said it was as much as my life was worth to come out; and if you hadn't acted so silly when Reuben called at noontime, I needn't have come, for she would have sent him to fetch you over."
"How was I silly?" asked Molly calmly.
"Why, not letting him in, and running round fastening the doors and windows, as if he was a band of robbers at the very least. Ma am says it's enough to put bad thoughts in a young man's head, when he wouldn't have had them himself."
"My father and mother both told me, while Reuben sat by last night, that I was not to have him in the house except while you were here, and even so, he
