Mrs.Bassett had heard of the approaching visit with liveliest interest.

A year before, when Marian had reported the presence in Mrs.Owen's house at Indianapolis of a strange girl with Professor Kelton, her curiosity had been piqued, but she soon dismissed the matter.

Marian had carried home little information, and while Mrs.
Bassett saw her aunt often on her frequent excursions to the city, she knew by long experience that Mrs.Owen did not yield gracefully to prodding.
Mrs.Bassett had heard all her life of Professor Kelton and she had met him now and then in the Delaware Street house, but her knowledge of him and his family was only the most fragmentary.

Nothing had occurred during the year to bring the Keltons again to her attention; but now, with a casualness in itself disconcerting, they had arrived at Mrs.
Owen's farmhouse, where, Mrs.Bassett was sure, no guests had ever been entertained before.

The house had just been remodeled and made altogether habitable, a fact which, Mrs.Bassett had been flattering herself, argued for Mrs.Owen's increasing interest in herself and her family.