But all this was superficial. The Adamses, between themselves, decided that Miss Austin was more deeply mysterious than was shown by her disinclination to make friends. They concluded she was transacting important business of some sort, and that her sketching of the winter scenery, which she did every clear day, was merely a blind.

Though Mrs. Adams resented this, and urged her husband to send the girl packing, Old Salt demurred.

“She’s done no harm as yet,” he said. “She’s a mystery, but not a wrong one, ’s far’s I can make out. Let her alone, mother. I’ve got my eye on her.”

“I’ve got my two eyes on her, and I can see more’n you can. Why, Salt, that girl don’t hardly sleep at all. Night after night, she sits up looking out of the window, over toward the college buildings—”

“How do you know?”

“I go and listen at her door,” Mrs. Adams admitted, without embarrassment. “I want to know what she’s up to.”

“You can’t see her.”

“No, but I hear her moving around restlessly, and putting the window up and down—and Miss Bascom—her room’s cornerways on the ell, she says she sees her looking out the window late at night ’most every night.”

“Miss Bascom’s a meddling old maid, and I’d put her out of this house before I would the little girl.”

“Of course you would! You’re all set up because she makes so much of you—”

“Oh, come now, Esther, you can’t say that child makes much of me! I wish she wou