"Oh! ma'am," exclaimed the girl in protest, and then she burst into tears. "Don't cry," commanded her mistress imperiously. "We shall all of us have plenty of time for crying hereafter; but there are other things to be done now. Pack your own clothes as well as mine. I will see to your master's, and tell Susan to put up hers also." "Do you mean, ma'am, that you mean to leave the house with no one in it but those men. What will become of all the things?" "I do not care what becomes of them," was the answer. "Now go and do as I have told you." On her way upstairs Esther encountered Mr. Meadows, who about that house seemed indeed ubiquitous. "She is a good deal cut up, ain't she?" he said confidentially. "It is no business of yours whether she is or not," Esther retorted indignantly. "Whether she is or not," mimicked Mr. Meadows, "you need not fly out at a fellow like that. It is none so pleasant for me being planted in such a beastly dull hole as this. The governor might as well have sent me to take charge of a church and churchyard. That job would have been about as lively as this precious Homewood place." "Pity you and your governor are not in a churchyard together," said Esther, with her nose very much turned up, and the corners of her mouth very much drawn down, and her cheeks very red and her chin held very high. "If there wasn't another trade in the world, I would rather starve than take to yours." Having fired which shot--one she knew would hit the bull's eye--Esther went swiftly on her way, while Mr. Meadows proceeded, the weather being still wet, to solace himself by smoking a pipe in the conservatory; the consequence being that when Mrs. Werner, a couple of hours later came to call upon Mrs. Mortomley, she found the drawing-room reeking of tobacco. "They will bring their beer in here next," observed Dolly when she entered the apartment, and then she flung open the windows and commenced telling her story, for which Mrs. Werner was utterly unprepared. She told it with dry eyes, with two red spots burning on her cheeks, with parched lips and a hard unnatural voice. She did not break down when Mrs. Werner took her to her heart and cried over her as a mother might have done. "Oh! Dolly," she sobbed. "Dolly, my poor darling--oh! the happy days we have spent together," and then she checked herself, and holding Dolly a little way off looked at her through a mist of tears. "Why did I know nothing of this?" she went on. "Dolly, why did you not write and tell me? I thought everything was going to be straight and comfortable. I had not an idea you were in such trouble. Yes, you are right, you must leave Homewood. You have remained here too long already--where do you think of going?" "I have not been able to think," Mrs. Mortomley answered. "Advise me, Lenny. I will do whatever you say is best." "Will you really, darling, follow my advice for once?"