Eleanor was as good as her word, for she was soon busy with dish-water and mop, rattling the china, and banging pans about as if noise and bustle were sure signs of hard work and energy. Polly laughed as she cleared away the remains of the meal and then caught up a towel to dry the dishes. As they worked the two girls talked. "Poll, now that you have this gold mine, what will you do with all the wealth that is yours?" asked Eleanor. Polly held a decorated plate in front of her face to hide her smile, and pretended to be looking for grease on its surface. When she had straightened her face again, she said: "Oh, I'm going away to school, first of all. I'm not so sure that I want to stay in Denver, now that you have told me all about Chicago. I'll write for catalogues of schools there; and then I can see John quite often during the school year." "Just what I would have suggested, Poll! Then you can live at home with me. Dad and you and I will have the best times!" To accentuate her approval of Polly's premature plans, Eleanor swished the dish-mop wildly up and down in the soapy water, but the suds flew up lightly, as soapsuds will, and a bubble burst in Polly's eye. "Oo-h! Stop throwing dish water in my face, Nolla!" cried Polly, with eyes screwed shut and one free hand trying to rub the smarting lye from her eye. "I never did, Polly! It must have splashed accidentally when I was washing the pan." "You have done nothing since you began the dishes, but rattle and swash that mop about in the pan as if you were mining the ore from the cave," complained Polly, as she managed to open her eyes again. "I suppose it is because we are so excited over the find, and all it means for you, Polly," explained Eleanor, contritely. "It doesn't mean much more, now, than before. The thing I am most happy over, is that Old Man Montresor will be vindicated, and people will stop jeering at me, and at what they called his locoed ideas." The conversation was interrupted at this moment by the appearance of Sary. She first poked her head from the partly opened door of her room and then said: "Is any one about to see me?" Polly turned to make sure that they were alone in the kitchen, and Eleanor replied: "No, what is it, Sary?" Then the maid stepped forth and such a vision! She had curled her red hair on a pair of old-fashioned tongs. The curling irons were but a quarter of an inch in diameter and they were heated by thrusting them into the living embers of the kitchen fire. When Sary drew the comb through her scanty tresses they took on the appearance of carrot-colored cotton threads which had just been ripped out of an old garment--so crinkly and frizzed were the strands of hair. The flowered organdy dress that Eleanor had given Sary to wear for the great occasion of receiving a caller, was much too small for the buxom widow, and she was in great distress about it. This brought her out to ask advice of the girls.