It gave her such a start, so absorbed had she been in her surroundings, that she almost toppled down the steps.

But the next instant it was Hawkins who was having the start.

Unabashed by his pompous manner, her keen gray eyes swept him one quick look from his sphinx-like face to his massive shoe-buckles, as if she had been given some strange botanical specimen to label and classify.

Without an instant's hesitation she exclaimed in the tone of one making a delightful discovery, "Why, it's _Hawkins_!" It was positively uncanny to the man that this stranger on whom he had never laid eyes before should call him by name.

He wondered if she were one of these new-fangled mind-readers he had been hearing so much about.
It was also upsetting to find that he had been mistaken about her delay in knocking.