"There--go away, girls; you bother poor Richard with your chatter!" said Colonel Egbert, affecting great cordiality and a little familiarity. (The fact was, as may have been noticed, that Bell had spoken only five words aloud and Joe not a word, since the two had entered.) "Richard is not so well, I am afraid. I will sit by him awhile and you may go away and gabble to your heart's content." "Just as you like," answered Isabella, doubling up a half-unrolled little package and preparing to go. "I have some little things to look after up-stairs. Will you go with me, Joe? Of course you are not going away until after dinner?" "Humph! I do not know that I am going away at all!" said the wild girl, her words very different from her thought at the moment. "You are such nice people, and Dick is such an interesting invalid, and who knows--well, I will not speculate any more about that, _in public_, just yet! Yes, Bell, go up-stairs and attend to your finery; I am going down into the basement to ask Norah for two slices of bread-and-butter and the wing of a cold chicken!" And away through the noiseless glass door buzzed Josephine, on her way to the basement, followed by Isabella on her way to the inner penetralia of the second floor; while Col. Egbert Crawford shied his fatigue-cap at the desk and drew up his chair to the side of the sofa occupied by the invalid. Isabella really went up-stairs, and for the purpose designated. Shame for Joe Harris, it must be said that while she really descended to the basement and made an inroad on Norah's larder to the extent of the wing of cold chicken and _one_ slice of bread-and-butter, yet she thrust both the edibles into a piece of paper and into her pocket, at the imminent risk of greasing the latter convenient receptacle, and was back again on the parlor floor within the space of one and a half minutes by the little Geneva watch which she carried so bewitchingly at her belt. If mischief and sad earnest can both be blended in the expression of one face at one and the same time, they were so blended in hers at that moment. What was in the wind and who was to suffer?--for suffer somebody always did when Josey fairly started out on a campaign!