“MY DARLING QUEENIE.—You do not know how surprised and delighted I was to hear that you were in America, or how sorry I was to hear of your loss. You must be so lonely and sad, alone in a strange country. What is Merrivale like? and do you think it would be a good place for me? Is it not funny that I had thought to go there, and have actually written to a Mrs. Ferguson, who turns out to be your aunt? But she asks more for her business than I feel able to pay, and so the plan has been abandoned for the present. But I must see you, and, remembering all your kindness in the years past, you will not think me intrusive when I tell you, that before the summer is gone I am coming to Merrivale, just to look into your dear eyes again, and see if you are changed. I like your aunt and cousins; they are genuine ladies, and I am glad they belong to you.” The first thing Queenie did after reading this letter, was to mount her horse and gallop in hot haste to the village, where she astonished Mrs. Lydia Ferguson by offering her more for her business than she had demanded of Miss La Rue. “It is my Margery—my friend, and I am going to have her here, if I turn my own house into a dressmaker’s shop,” she said, and she talked so fast, and gesticulated so rapidly, that Mrs. Lydia grew quite bewildered, but managed to comprehend that a price was offered her which would be well for her to accept, as it might never be offered her again. Anna, too, was all eagerness to “get out of the vile thing and be somebody,” as she expressed it, and so the bargain was closed, and Mrs. Lydia was to retire at once into the privacy and respectability of private life; the obnoxious sign was to be taken from the front window, and Miss Anna was to be merely the daughter of a grocer which she considered quite an ascent in the social scale. Mrs. Lydia did not wish to sell her house, nor Queenie to buy it. She had heard there was a charming little cottage on Maple Avenue, for sale, and she swooped down upon the owner like a hurricane, asking him what his terms were, and if he would vacate at once. “You see I wish to get him out immediately, for I mean to make it just like a palace for Margery,” she said to her grandmother, who tried to restrain the reckless girl, telling her she was going on at a ruinous rate, and that, of herself she could not transact business, until she was of age. “But Mr. Beresford can transact it for me, and I shall have it,” she said; and she took Mr. Beresford by storm and compelled him to make an arrangement whereby the cottage and her aunt’s business came into her possession. Then she wrote to her friend: