Storage society was almost wholly feminine; in rare instances there was a man who must have been sent in dearth¹ of women or in an hour of their disability. Then the man came hastily, with a porter, and either pulled all the things out of the rooms so that he could honestly say he had seen them, and that the thing wanted was not there; or else merely had the doors opened, and after a glance inside resolved to wait till his wife, or mother, or daughter could come. He agreed in guilty eagerness with the workmen that this was the only way.  
The exception to the general rule was a young man who came one bright spring morning when all nature suggested getting one's stuff out and going into the country, and had the room next the Forsyths' original five-dollar room opened. As it happened, Charlotte was at the moment visiting this room upon her mother's charge to see whether certain old scrim sash-curtains, which [Pg 20]they had not needed for ages but at last simply must have, were not lurking² there in a chest of general curtainings. The Forsyths now had rooms on other floors, but their main room was at the end of the corridor branching northward³ from that where the five-dollar room was. Near this main room that nice New York family had their rooms, and Charlotte had begun the morning in their friendly neighborhood, going through some chests that might perhaps have the general curtainings in them and the scrim curtains among the rest. It had not, and she had gone to what the Forsyths called their old ancestral five-dollar room, where that New York family continued to project a sort of wireless⁴ chaperonage over her. But the young man had come with a porter, and, with her own porter, Charlotte could not feel that even a wireless chaperonage was needed, though the young man approached with the most beaming face she thought she had ever seen, and said he hoped he should not be in her way. She answered with a sort of helpless reverberation⁵ of his glow, Not at all; she should only be a moment. She wanted to say she hoped she would not be in his way, but she saved herself in time, while, with her own eyes intent upon the façade of her room and her mind trying to lose itself in the question which curtain-trunk [Pg 21]the scrims might be in, she kept the sense of his sweet eyes, the merriest eyes she had ever seen, effulgent⁶ with good-will and apology and reverent⁷ admiration⁸. She blushed to think it admiration, though she liked to think it so, and she did not snub him when the young man jumped about, neglecting his own storage, and divining the right moments for his offers of help. She saw that he was a little shorter than herself, that he was very light and quick on his feet, and had a round, brown face, clean-shaven, and a round, brown head, close shorn, from which in the zeal⁹ of his attentions to her he had shed his straw hat onto the window-sill. He formed a strong contrast to the contents of his store-room, which was full, mainly, of massive white furniture picked out in gold, and very blond. He said casually¹⁰ that it had been there, off and on, since long before he could remember, and at these words an impression, vague, inexplicable¹¹, deepened in Charlotte's mind.
 
"Mother," she said, for she had now disused the earlier "mamma" in deference¹² to modern usage, "how old was I when we first took that five-dollar room?"
 
She asked this question after she had shown the scrim curtains she had found and brought home with her.
 
[Pg 22]"Why? I don't know. Two or three; three or four. I should have to count up. What makes you ask?"
 
"Can a person recollect¹³ what happened when they were three or four?"
 
"I should say not, decidedly."
 
"Or recollect a face?"
 
"Certainly not."
 
"Then of course it wasn't. Mother, do you remember ever telling me what the little boy was like who gave me all his playthings and I couldn't decide what to give him back?"
 
"What a question! Of course not! He was very brown and funny, with the beamingest little face in the world. Rather short for his age, I should say, though I haven't the least idea what his age was."
 
"Then it was the very same little boy!" Charlotte said.
 
"Who was the very same little boy?" her mother demanded.
 
"The one that was there to-day; the young man, I mean," Charlotte explained, and then she told what had happened with a want of fullness which her mother's imagination supplied.
 
"Did he say who he was? Is he coming back to-morrow or this afternoon? Did you inquire who he was or where?"
 
[Pg 23]"What an idea, mother!" Charlotte said, grouping the several impossibilities under one head in her answer.
 
"You had a perfect right to know, if you thought he was the one."
 
"But I didn't think he was the one, and I don't know that he is now; and if he was, what could I do about it?"
 
"That is true," Mrs. Forsyth owned. "But it's very disappointing. I've always felt as if they ought to know it was your undecidedness and not ungenerousness."
 
Charlotte laughed a little forlornly, but she only said, "Really, mother!"
 
Mrs. Forsyth was still looking at the curtains. "Well, these are not the scrims I wanted. You must go back. I believe I will go with you. The sooner we have it over the better," she added, and she left the undecided Charlotte to decide whether she meant the scrim curtains or the young man's identity.
 
It was very well, for one reason, that she decided¹⁴ to go with Charlotte that afternoon. The New-Yorkers must have completed the inspection¹⁵ of their trunks, for they had not come back. Their failure to do so was the more important because the young man had come back and was actively¹⁶ superintending the

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