Within a week after Phil’s departure the whole town was full of her, and rumor said she was running a wild career with no one to advise or check her except Mr. Beresford, who seemed as crazy as herself. Everybody thought her wonderfully bright, and fresh, and pretty, but her ways astonished the sober people of Merrivale, who, nevertheless, were greatly interested and amused with watching her as she developed phase after phase of her variable nature—visiting Mr. Beresford at his office two or three times a day, ostensibly to translate foreign letters and papers for him, but really, it was said by the gossips, to see the man himself; galloping off miles and miles into the country on her spirited horse, with the little old Frenchman in attendance; worrying Mrs. Jerry by having chocolate in her room in the morning, breakfasting at twelve, dining at six, with as much ceremony as if a dozen people were seated at the table instead of one lone girl, who sometimes never touched the dishes prepared with so much care—dining, too, in all sorts of places as the fancy took her; on the north piazza, and on the south piazza; giving her money away by the hundreds to the Fergusons, and by the tens, and fives, and ones to anybody asking for it; sinking a little fortune on the grounds at Hetherton Place, which she was entirely metamorphosing, with fifteen or twenty men at work there all the time, while she superintended them, and gave them lemonade or root beer two or three times a day, as an incentive to swifter labor. Such was the state of affairs when Phil, improving the very first opportunity for leave of absence, came back to Merrivale. It was 10 A.M. when he reached the station, and exactly half-past ten to a minute when he found himself at Hetherton Place, his hand locked in that of Queenie, who in her big garden hat, with trowel, and pruning-knife, led him all over the grounds, where the fifteen men were at work, pointing out her improvements, and asking what he thought of them. And Phil, who had promised his mother to check his cousin if he found her going on recklessly, as they had heard from Anna, proved a very flunky, and instead of checking her, entered heart and soul into her plans, and even made suggestions as to how they could be improved. So useful, in fact, did he make himself, and so much skill and taste did he display, that Queenie forgot entirely to chide him for his lack of a profession. Indeed, she was rather glad than otherwise that he had no profession, as it left him free to be with her all the time and to become at last the superintendent of the whole, with this difference, however, that while he directed the men, Queenie directed him and made him her very slave.