"And now," exclaimed Aunt Cheerful from her chair by the fire, "is the time, my dear, when I always see my Lady of the Fireglow in her flame-colored satin! Jewels of fire flash about her throat and hair, and very beautiful she is too, I fancy, though to be sure I am never able to catch a glimpse of her face!" Aunt Cheerful smiled across the firelit hearth at the shadowy figure of her guest. "And the third place at the table," she owned wistfully, "is always for her, for somehow to me she is the fire's promise of the kind and beautiful wife who may one day come into my big son's life and therefore into mine!"

The clock above the mantel struck nine and to Jean's astonishment a window beside the screen was suddenly raised from the porch side and a boy's head and shoulders appeared, plainly visible in the fan of light from the hidden lamp. Not a very large boy—surely a scant dozen years lay behind him!—but a strangely self-possessed little chap nevertheless, with damp, waving hair, a grim little chin, and cheeks as rosy as the apple of health itself.

Now as Jean watched from her shadowy corner, the boy carefully shifted his oil-skin packet of papers, seated himself upon the window sill and doffed his dripping cap with the air of a court gallant. And mortal ears never heard a stranger conversation.

"Good evening, Lady Cheerful!" he said deferentially, his grave brown eyes seeking the spot by the fire where Aunt Cheerful's white woolen gown glimmered faintly in the firelight.

"Why, good evening, Lord Chesterfield!" returned Aunt Cheerful, a wonderful warmth and affection in her voice; "I trust I see you well this evening, sir?"

"Very well indeed, I thank you, ma'am! I trust," he added very politely, "that your Ladyship is enjoying good health?"

"I am indeed. May I venture to ask your Lordship how you have found business this evening?"

Lord Chesterfield looked gravely at the dripping oilskin.

"The night is very wet," he admitted, "and business poor!"

"Dear, dear! What a pity!"

"But, as usual, I have given myself the honor of stopping at the post-office for your Ladyship's mail."

"Kindly and courteous and thoughtful as ever!" nodded Aunt Cheerful. Lord Chesterfield's cheeks reddened with pleasure.

"There was nothing!" he said regretfully. "Now as to the news"—frowning thoughtfully—"Mrs. Bobbins' twins have the measles."

"Well, now, I am sorry!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful sympathetically.

"And Grandmother Radcliffe's cow 'pears to be growing more mopey and blue each day. She bellows terrible mournful."

"I can't imagine," mused Aunt Cheerful, "what can be the matter with that poor cow!"

"The strange lady at the hotel went walking to-night in the rain and she's not back yet. Most likely she's gone a-visitin'."

"Hum!" said Aunt Cheerful.

"And then"—Lord Chesterfield cleared his throat—"I wouldn't tell you this, ma'am, but your Ladyship would surely ask me. I'm sorry to have to tell you that there's another leak in that roof of mine."

"Another leak! Oh, my dear boy!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful in dismay, startled out of her court manners by her quick solicitude.

"It is nothing, madam, I assure you!" urged Lord Chesterfield gallantly, "I've got mos' a pound of chewin' gum from the boys to mend it with. They took up a chewing gum subscription," he added gratefully.

"Lord Chesterfield," said Aunt Cheerful very soberly, "I'm afraid you'll have to give up that hermit hut of yours. It's growing very leaky! You've thought over very, very carefully that proposition of coming to live with me?"

"Very carefully, ma'am, I thank you!" said Lord Chesterfield firmly. "I'm afraid I prefer to stay a bachelor."

"And may I venture a question concerning the health of your Lordship's many patients?"

"All doing nicely, ma'am, very nicely."

With a quick twist of his arm, the bachelor dropped a newspaper within and rising bowed, a gallant little figure of a gentleman framed in the lamp-glow.

"Allow me to present your Ladyship with one of my papers!" he said courteously.

"And allow me to thank you for it!" interposed Aunt Cheerful gently.

Again the boy raised his tattered cap and smiled, a grave little smile for all its brightness.

"Good night, Lady Cheerful!" he said.

"Good night, Lord Chesterfield and remember—any time your bachelor life grows too lonely—"

But Lord Chesterfield was off into the shadows of the dripping lane, whistling as cheerily as a robin.

Aunt Cheerful turned to the mystified guest at her fireside.

"Oh, my dear," she exclaimed gratefully, "how very tactful of you to make no sound. The presence of a stranger would have confused him so! Just a little game we play each night, Lord Chesterfield and I—"

"What a dear little lad he is!" exclaimed Jean.

Aunt Cheerful bent and turned the dying log.

"A kindly, courteous little gentleman, ever-mindful of my poor lame foot;" she said thoughtfully, "with his proud, boyish heart afire with dreams—dreams of becoming a very great doctor and a gallant gentleman. Why, my dear, his father was such a queer hermit who lived with this little son of his in a ruined shack along the river, a ragged, handsome, silent man of very great culture, 'twas said, and this fall when he died the boy refused to leave his crazy hut. A chore here and a chore there, so he lives, a wee, lovable, busy little hermit, selling his newspapers, sweeping out the school and the church, and doctoring all the sick animals about with arnica and witch-hazel. To be sure a hundred friendly eyes in Westowe watch over him in secret but few dare offer him any aid."

"But why 'Lord Chesterfield'?"

"I have read him such portions of Lord Chesterfield as I deemed suitable," replied Aunt Cheerful, "and we play our little game at his request that he may grow familiar with the ways and words of gentlemen."

And Jean Varian brushed something away from her long dark lashes that sparkled suspiciously like a tear. Surely Aunt Cheerful and gallant Lord Chesterfield were worth the many, many miles of the rainy journey!

"And now, my dear, to bed!" suggested Aunt Cheerful, smiling and with a busy tap! tap! of her crutch she was briskly leading the way up the winding stairway to a room above.

A smell of pine, the lighting of a lamp, the quick crackle of dry wood as Aunt Cheerful bent over a tiny fire-place, and Jean uttered a cry of admiration. Pine cones and branches showered in pattern across the wall-paper and the carpet; pine-sprigged chintz covered the old-fashioned chairs, and from somewhere a pine pillow gave forth the fragrance of the winter forest.

"My Pine Bough Bedroom!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful delightedly; "and how glad I am you like it. And I furnished it so, my dear, in a little wave of superstition. An old and wrinkled gypsy was passing through my lane and when I called her in for a cup of tea, what do you suppose she said? 'Kind lady, great happiness will come to you one day in the heart of the Christmas pines!' Doubtless an idle phrase that came to her with the smell of the pine but I often think of it. Good night, my dear."

But Jean laid an impetuous hand upon the old lady's shoulder.

"Aunt Cheerful," she said gently, "you have not once asked me my name!"

"Why neither I have, my dear," nodded Aunt Cheerful, "but then I fancied you would tell me yourself if you wished me to know."

Jean colored hotly.

"Aunt Cheerful," she said hurriedly, "there are reasons, for a time at least, why—why I can not tell you my name or why I have come to Westowe! Oh, I do hope you will not misunderstand me. May I not," she added pleadingly, "join in name that little group of nobility to which Lord Chesterfield and Lady Cheerful belong?"

"Why to be sure, you may!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful, smiling. "I shall call you the Lady Ariel for you came to me like a beautiful spirit out of the wind and rain. Good night, dear."

Very thoughtfully, Jean loosened the shining masses of her dark hair and brushed it.

"The Lady Ariel!" she mused, smiling. "And surely as whimsical a guest as any spirit of the air might be." Absently the girl's eyes rested upon a book, exquisitely bound in Levant, on a table near-by. It bore the title "Songs of Cheer" and with a smile at the eternal cheeriness of this chance shelter of hers, the girl opened it.

And as the Lady Ariel read, her beautiful face flamed scarlet, and shaking queerly, she dropped to her knees by the snowy bed, all her superb self-possession gone in a passionate fit of weeping.

Brush! brush! went the dripping pines against the window in a ceaseless monody, and presently this very strange guest of Aunt Cheerful's raised her head. Very white and strained her face but her eyes were shining.