Benella, I fancy, never had so varied a week in her life, and she was in her element. We were obliged to hire a side-car by the day, as two of our residences were over a mile apart; and the driver of that vehicle was the only person, I think, who had any suspicion of our sanity. In the intervals of teaching Francesca cooking, and eating the results while the cook herself prudently lunched or dined with her friends, Benella 'spring-cleaned' the lodge at the Old Hall, scrubbed the gateposts, mended stone walls, weeded garden beds, made bags for the brooms and dusters and mattresses, burned coffee and camphor and other ill-smelling things in all the rooms, and devoted considerable time to superintending my little maid, that I might not feel neglected. We were naturally obliged, meanwhile, to wait upon ourselves and keep our frocks in order; but as long as the Derelict was so busy and happy, and so devoted to the universal good, it would have been churlish and ungrateful to complain. On leaving the Wee Hut, as Francesca had, with ostentatious modesty, named her residence, she paid her landlady two pounds, and was discomfited when the exuberant and impetuous woman embraced her in a paroxysm of weeping gratitude. “I cannot understand, Penelope, why she was so disproportionately grateful, for I only gave her five shillings over the two pounds rent.” “Yes, dear,” I responded drily; “but you remember that the rent was for the month, and you paid her two pounds five shillings for the week.” All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for that surgical operation should ever come. Finally, just as we were about to separate for the night, she said, with insinuating sweetness, “You won't tell Ronald about my mistake with the rent-money, will you, dearest and darlingest girls?”