People did not mean to mix Edna up in her uncle’s quarrel, but it affected her nevertheless, and on one pretext and another the Gardners left the school, while others gradually dropped off too, until Edna began seriously to think she might be obliged to seek employment elsewhere, and had some thoughts of going to New York and devoting herself wholly to her favorite occupation,—drawing and painting. She and Jack were the best of friends, and through him she hoped to get a situation in the city, and she was about writing to him with reference to it, when she heard from Maude of Roy’s plan concerning herself, and then received his letter containing the offer, which she decided at once to accept. Among her other accomplishments, she numbered that of imitating, or adapting herself with great facility to different styles of handwriting, and this was a help to her now. Roy knew her natural handwriting, and it was necessary that she should take another. Next to her own, the style she used with the most ease was a pretty, running back-hand, and she adopted this in the letter she wrote to Mr. Leighton accepting his offer, and naming the first of September as the most convenient time for her to come to Leighton, provided it suited Mrs. Churchill. It did suit Mrs. Churchill, who seemed much better now that she had something to look forward to, and who began to take a great interest in having everything comfortable and pleasant for the stranger. “I shall want her near me, of course,” she said to Georgie, who was often at the house; “and yet I do not wish her to feel as if she were a prisoner, tied close to my side. Here’s this little room opening out of mine; but I think it is too small, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Churchill stepped into the hall, and opening a door directly opposite her own, continued: “I have about decided to give her this one. It is near my own, and very pleasant too. Do you think she will like it?” Georgie did not say that this room, with the bay-window and fine river view, was the one of all others which she would choose for her own, in case she was ever fortunate enough to reign as mistress of the house, but she did suggest that Miss Overton ran some risk of being spoiled if the best were given her at first. “I dare say the little room opening from yours is quite as good as she has been accustomed to, and will suit her very well,” she said, but Mrs. Churchill did not think so. She felt a deep interest in the young stranger, and wished everything to be as pleasant for her as possible. “If I could only see better, I should know if things were right,” she said; “but I can’t, and I wish you would superintend a little, and if anything is out of place, see that it is righted.”