“Oh, that’s the name of the place you were talking about yesterday, is it?” “Didn’t I tell you?” Mabel was still on her knees. “I sha’n’t get up till you say you are going,” she continued. “It would be too bad to allow you to endure such a penance, so——” Miss Rindy paused and continued to smile down on the supplicant. “So—so——” Mabel waited a moment expectantly. “You are going, aren’t you?” she said at last. And Miss Rindy answered, “I are, you are, we are.” Up sprang Mabel to give her a violent hug. “You dear, dear thing!” she exclaimed. “Here, here, look out,” cried Miss Rindy. “I don’t allow such demonstrations.” “I must do something to express my joy,” said Mabel. “‘My heart with rapture thrills, and dances with the daffodils.’ Be a daffodil, Ellen.” She caught Ellen around the waist and the two went off in a wild dance, scaring Wipers out of his wits, and causing Miss Rindy to cry out, “If this is the way you two are going to behave, I’ll take back what I said and will stay at home.” “I’ll be good, indeed I will,” promised Mabel, dropping into a chair and folding her hands meekly. “Then let’s talk business,” returned Miss Rindy, herself taking a seat. “You spoke of taking a cook along. Would it be possible to engage one of your grandmother’s servants? If her house is to be closed, it might be a good idea.” Mabel shook her head. “Wouldn’t do at all. They are all so high and mighty that any one of them would leave on the first boat. They would scorn a simple way of living, and would require all sorts of things that Beatty’s Island doesn’t furnish. No, no, we must have a different sort.” “Why not Beulah?” Ellen spoke up. “She is a nice comfortable kind, used to our ways, and I believe she would be willing to go.” “Where is she? Where is she?” asked Mabel eagerly. “She’ll be along after a while; she is not one given to undue haste, but she gets there in course of time. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. She is no sylph, and large bodies move slowly.” “I don’t care how big she is, so she does our work, is a good cook, and is clean and honest.” “She is all that. Her chief fault is an overgrown idea of her own importance, but Cousin Rindy knows how to manage her, and it would be all right if we could induce her to go.” “And stay,” put in Miss Rindy grimly. The upshot of the matter was that Beulah consented to go, though not without some demur. “It terrible fur off, ain’t it?” she protested. “Are it crost dem waters where you went to tend de sojers, Miss Rindy?” “O dear, no,” Miss Rindy reassured her. “I was days in crossing, and here we shall leave one afternoon and get there the next day at noon, Miss Wickham tells us.” “Where we stays at night?” “On the train if we go by rail; on the boat if we go by water.” Beulah considered this, and Mabel struck in with the conciliatory question, “Which way would you rather go, Beulah?”