“A check to the Louise Home, flowers for Confederate graves. She didn’t do it impulsively, Dr. Ray tells me. They talked it over thirty or forty times. Then one night suddenly, as they sat on the porch, Miss Julia exclaimed: ‘I’m going to do it. It’s what I’ve longed to do as long as I can remember, and I’m going to now. I’ll put one thousand dollars in the bank, to make things a trifle easier after I’m back, and to pay for my funeral. My funeral has troubled me rather—especially if I should happen to die soon after one of the garden-parties: I’m sometimes a little short of ready money then. My shroud is all ready, and the lot in the cemetery was paid for long ago, of course; but there are always extra expenses, and a Townsend must be decently buried, and buried with Townsend money.’ ” “I don’t see Miss Julia on the rates,” Mrs. Sên said shakenly. “No!” Sên King-lo said proudly. “ ‘I’ll put one thousand dollars away, and I’ll spend every cent of the rest and see China and Spain and the Bridge of Sighs and Westminster Abbey at last,’ and here she is in the best rooms of the best hotel!” “I can’t think of Washington without Miss Julia across the river at Rosehill,” Ruby said musingly. “Nor I,” Sên King-lo agreed. “It’s like a harp with its sweetest string gone.” “And how those poor darkies will miss her! And what a time they’ll have! Dinah and Uncle Lysander must feel like orphans.” “Lysander and Dinah are here with Miss Julia,” Sên chuckled. Mrs. Sên gave a little gasping laugh. “Great Scott!” she cried. CHAPTER XXXIX Dr. Ray came soon after breakfast the next morning, and she stayed all day. “Here is your bridesmaid,” she told Ivy gaily, as she took Mrs. Sên in her arms, then put her away a little to search the younger face with shrewd, beautiful eyes that hid the anxiety they felt. “I’m having the time of my life. Nothing but slang will express it. Between Julia Calhoun and this marvel of a place and the hotel bills, I’m quite off my head. How are you, my child! But you needn’t tell me; I only asked for manners. I can see how you are!” Ivy laughed happily. “How is Miss Julia?” she asked gently. “More so than ever,” Dr. Ray replied. “How I ever am to get her home again, I don’t know. I thought I’d never get her away from Honolulu. I must not say that she went surf-riding, for she didn’t; but I know she wanted to.” “Scandal!” Sên King-lo rebuked their guest with a quiet laugh. “Not a bit of it,” Dr. Ray protested. “The scandal is coming. But she watched the surf-riding and loved it. She bought a Hawaiian phrase-book and climbed up Diamond Head road to the peak on a pony. She wore a _lei_! She went to a moonlight picnic at Weiniea, and she saw a hula dance.” Sên King-lo’s face broke into ripples of fun, as only a Chinese face can, and then the room moaned with his laughter. “But,” Ivy expostulated, “Dr. Ray! How could you let her do it!”