Lady Louisa sighed again. Her mind was made up. Janey must give way, and the nurse must be got rid of. Those were the two next things to be achieved. Then perhaps she would be suffered to rest in peace. CHAPTER XV "And Death stopped knitting at the muffling band. 'The shroud is done,' he muttered, 'toe to chin.' He snapped the ends, and tucked his needles in." JOHN MASEFIELD. After a sleepless night, and after the protracted toilet of the old and feeble, Lady Louisa tackled her task with unabated determination. She dictated a telegram to her lawyer, sent out the nurse for a walk, and desired Janey to bring Harry to her. Harry, who was toiling over his arithmetic under the cedar, with the help of a tutor from Riebenbridge and a box of counters, obeyed with alacrity. He looked a very beaming creature, with "fresh morning face," as he came into his mother's room. "Good morning, mamma." "Good morning, my son." The terrible ruler looked benign. She nodded and smiled at him. He did not feel as cowed as usual. "You can go away, Janey, and you needn't come back till I ring." "And now tell me all about the performing dogs," said the terrible ruler in the bed, when Janey had left the room. Harry saw that she was really interested, and he gave her an exact account, interrupted by the bubbling up of his own laughter, of a dog which had been dressed up as a man in a red coat, with a cocked hat and a gun. He could hardly tell her for laughing. The dread personage laughed too, and said, "Capital! Capital!" And he showed her one of the tricks, which consisted of sitting up on your hind legs with a pipe in your mouth. He imitated exactly how the dog had sat, which in a man was perhaps not quite so mirth-provoking as in a dog. Nevertheless, the dread personage laughed again. It promised to be an agreeable morning. He hoped it would be a long time before she remembered his arithmetic and sent him back to it, that hopeless guess-work which he sometimes bribed Tommy the gardener's boy to do for him in the tool-shed. "And then you got your gloves!" said the dread personage suddenly. "How many pairs was it?" Harry was bewildered, and stared blankly at her. "You must remember how many pairs it was." Harry knit his poor brow, rallied his faculties, and said it was two pairs. "And now," said Lady Louisa, "you may have a chocolate out of my silver box, and let me hear all about--you know what," and she nodded confidentially at him. But he only gaped at her, half frightened. She smiled reassuringly at him. "Nurse told me all about it," she said encouragingly. "That was why you weren't to tell me. She wanted it to be a great surprise to me." "I wasn't to say a word," said Harry doubtfully,--"not a word--about _that_." "No. That was just what Nurse said to me. You weren't to say a single word last night, until she had told me. But now I know all about it, so we can talk. Was it great fun?"