It may as well be mentioned here that the Doctor went as far as the old boat he remembered. And that then he went farther; he went to the end of the point, a mile away. "Surely you have not been gone half an hour?" said Mrs. Carew, as Margaret and Winthrop re-entered the eyrie's little drawing-room. "Two hours, nearly," answered Winthrop, looking at his watch. "Betty is _so_ demonstrative," said Mrs. Rutherford to her niece, in a plaintive tone, when they were left alone. "I verily believe she has kissed me during this one call at least twenty times. She always had the best heart in the world--poor Betty!" "She is very stout, isn't she?" she resumed, after a pause. "Her figure is all gone, she's like a meal-sack with a string tied round it." Her eyes wandered to the mirror, which gave back the reflection of her own shapely person in its rich, perfectly fitting attire. "And how she was dressed!--did you notice! That old-fashioned glace silk that shines, made with gathers, and a hem--I don't know _when_ I've seen a hem before." She spoke with much seriousness, her eyes were slowly measuring the gulf that separated this friend of her youth from herself. After a while these eyes moved up to the reflection in the mirror of her own silver-gray locks, arranged in their graceful waves above her white forehead. "She has the old-time ideas, poor Betty!" she murmured. Then, gravely and impartially, as one who chronicles a past historical epoch: "She still colors her hair!" CHAPTER V. Mrs. Carew's candles, in the old candelabra hung with glass prisms, were all lighted; in addition, her astral lamp was shining on a table in the back drawing-room, and near this lamp she was standing. The two rooms were large, square, separated by folding-doors which were held open by giant sea-shells, placed upon the carpet as weights. Wide doors led also from each room into the broad hall, which was lighted by a hanging lamp in a pictured porcelain shade. From the back drawing-room a second door led into the dining-room behind, which was also entered by a broader door at the end of the hall. "Now, Pompey," said the mistress of the house, "are you quite sure you understand? Tell me what it is you are to do." Pompey, a small, yellow-skinned negro, whose large, orb-like, heavily wrinkled eyelids (underneath which but a narrow line of eye appeared) were the most prominent features of his flat face, replied, solemnly: "W'en eberyting's ready, I fuss slips inter de hall, steppen softly, an' shets _dish_ yer do', de back parlo' do' inter de hall. I nex' announces suppah at de _fron_' parlo' do'. Den, wiles de compahny's parsing inter de hall, I hurries roun' tru _dish_ yer do'--de do' from de _dinin_'-room--gits out dat ar lamp mighty quick, an' has it onter de middle ob de suppah table befo' de _fuss_ head ob de compahny appeahs at de hall do'. An' I follers de same course _ob_wersed w'en de compahny retiahs." "Very well," said Mrs. Carew. "Now mind you do it."