“She will go the way we do unless she prefers to go up alone, in which case she can choose her own route,” said Miss Rindy severely. Beulah’s feathers drooped at once. “’Deed, Miss Rindy, I skeered to go all dat long ways by mahse’f; I goes when yuh does, an’ trabbles de same. Dat is,” she continued, her dignity again rising, “if so be I does go.” “You know you’re going, Beulah,” said Miss Rindy decidedly. “You wouldn’t throw away such a good chance as this. Of course you’re going.” “Yas’m, I ’specs I is,” replied Beulah meekly. So that matter was settled, though Beulah changed her mind more than once before June. “She teeters up and down like a seesaw,” declared Miss Rindy. “I don’t believe she has a notion of not going; it is only that she wants to impress us with her importance. I’ll fix her.” And fix her she did, for one morning when Beulah was declaring that she didn’t know after all that she would go,—it was so far,—Miss Rindy turned upon her. “Now, look here, Beulah,” she said, “I’ve had enough of this will and won’t. You’ve got to make up your mind this very minute or I’ll write to Miss Wickham and tell her to put an advertisement for a cook in the Baltimore papers. No fear that she won’t get plenty of answers. No more nonsense, you understand. Now, which is it, go or stay?” Miss Rindy fixed her with a glittering eye. Beulah fumbled with the edge of her apron, turning her head this way and that. “Yuh so up an’ down, Miss Rindy,” she made complaint. “I nuver see anybody with such millingtary ways. I ’specs yuh learns ’em whilst yuh was follerin’ eroun’ dem sojers. It’s jes’ lak yuh stands me up aginst a wall an’ says, ‘Shoot!’” “Shoot!” cried Miss Rindy so suddenly that Beulah gave an elephantine jump. “Law, Miss Rindy,” she cried, “yuh skeers me outen a year’s growth.” “Maybe that would be a good thing to do, if it affected your girth,” returned Miss Rindy laughing. “Now, look here, Beulah, you know that you’re nothing but a poor worm; that hymn you were singing this morning says so, and the way you crawl anybody would know it was true. We’re willing to take you with us, worm though you be, but if you don’t want to go, just say so at once without any more shilly-shallying, but I shall have my opinion of you, and it won’t be only a worm that I shall call you to your class leader. You gave me your word that you were going, and you know what happens to those that don’t speak the truth; if you don’t know, just look in Revelation, twenty-first chapter, twenty-seventh verse.” “Law, Miss Rindy, yuh sho does skeer me; yuh wuss’n de preacher.” “I’m glad of it; you need some one to be.” Beulah stood, still fingering her apron. Presently she asked, “Which a-way yuh is goin’, Miss Rindy?” “The quickest way, I think. We can take the Hell Gate route and reach Portland early in the morning.” Miss Rindy’s lips twitched as she said this.