"There! give that to the boy--and see here, Mason, I shall want some lunch ready by half after twelve. Send Mury right along to my room. I'm going away!" Mason's chin dropped in dismay, but she was too well-trained an automaton to put her feelings into words. She rustled starchily from the room, to give the dread message to Mary, who promptly flew upstairs, voluble with distress. "You never mean to say that you are going to leave us, Miss Cornelia? Why, you've only just come! I thought it was to be three months, at the least. You're never going so soon?" "Only for a few days. I'll be back again, to plague you, by the end of next week. Don't you want me to go, Mury?" Mary shook her head vigourously. "I'd like to keep you for ever! The house isn't the same place since you came. I was saying to my friend only last Sunday that I couldn't a bear to think of you leaving. Couldn't you find a nice young gentleman, and settle down in England for good? I'd come and live with you! I wouldn't ask anything better than to live with you all my days." "Mury, Mury! what about the friend? What would he say to such desertion?" Mary's grimace expressed a lively disregard of the friend's sufferings. "I don't know how it is, but I think a heap more of you nor I do of him," she confessed candidly. "I'd come fast enough, if you gave me the chance. There's lots of good-looking young gentlemen in England, Miss Cornelia!" "Is that so? I hope I'll meet quite a number of them, then; but I couldn't settle down out of my own country, Mury! You'll hev to cross the ocean if you want to tend my house. We'll speak about that another day; just now we've got to hustle round and get my clothes packed in the next hef hour. Just the dandiest things I've got. I'm going to have a real gay time in a hotel in London, Mury, with some friends from home, so I must be as smart as I know how. ... Get out the big dress basket, and we'll hold a Selection Committee right here on the bed."