Dorothea gravely advised her about the bags. “If I go to Brazil,” Mrs. Stewart continued fretfully, “perhaps I’d better leave my diamonds and take my other jewelry instead. Diamonds are very common in Brazil, they tell me. Every one has them. They grow them there, I think; but I’m not sure of that. And then there’s the matter of the climate. No one seems to know what it’s really like. I wonder if Lee Hendon could possibly have gone there?” Dorothea held up a warning finger. She heard the voices of the girls returning, and Mrs. Stewart, understanding, changed the subject at once without in the least changing the note of her complaining voice. “Of course, war is war,” she rambled on; “but what I always said from the first was that no one had any right to begin it unless they were sure they could win, and at the least they should have shown enough foresight to investigate the best places for us to go if we lost. A wise government would have let us all know whether Brazil or Mexico was the right place. But no! Nothing of that sort has been done, and the matter is left to the ladies to settle. However, whichever way I decide, your father, Corinne, will think we had better go to the other place.” “I don’t believe Uncle Charlie will want to go away at all,” Harriot remarked placidly, munching a piece of cake. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t stay right here the same as before.” “And do his own work like a common Yankee?” cried Corinne scornfully. “You forget that all the servants will be gone. I’d rather go to Brazil.” “You might pay the servants as we do in England,” Dorothea suggested. “Papa says it is much cheaper in the end.” “My dear, how original!” Mrs. Stewart remarked, sewing at top speed. “Children, I hope you will give heed to your cousin. She has quite a mind, quite a mind indeed. Of course I don’t see how we can house the servants and clothe them and feed them and pay them, too; but I’ll certainly mention it to your Uncle Charles.” She stopped abruptly to thread her needle and it was as if a river had suddenly ceased its soothing murmur. A little later, Harriot having consumed the last piece of cake, the girls took their departure with promises to see each other soon again. “What do you think,” Harriot said under her breath, when they were well away from the house, “Lee Hendon’s mother is dead and he’s run away!” “Why, how did you know that?” demanded Dorothea, thinking or Mrs. Stewart’s secrecy in the matter. “Corinne told me,” Harriot explained. “Aunt Cora doesn’t know and I didn’t want to tell her, because she’ll blab to everybody she sees, and—” “Yes, she told me,” Dorothea said, calmly. “She didn’t want you to know till I had told Aunt Parthenia.” “Well!” cried the outraged Harriot. “I like that! As if I couldn’t keep a secret better than Aunt Cora. At any rate, I don’t see why it should be made such a mystery. April will be the last person in the town to find it out. No one will tell her, of course.”