"Not often, madam, but sometimes. I can always find time for what I really want to do. If I like to be away for an hour or two, I'll sit up late the night before, long after midnight sometimes, planning the meals and the courses for the next day, and when I go away, I leave everything so that I can take it right up, the minute I get back, and lose nothing in time or in any other way." "It is only a born chef who could do that," said Miss Panney, "and it is very pleasant to see your affection for your former employers. Do you suppose that they will remain here much longer?" "Remain!" exclaimed La Fleur; "they've never said a word to me, madam, about going away, and I don't believe they have thought of it. I am sure I haven't." Miss Panney shook her head. "It's none of my business," she said, "but I've lived a long time in this world, and that gives me a right to speak my mind to people who haven't lived so long. It may have been all very well for the Dranes to have come here for a little vacation of a week or ten days, but to stay on and on is not the proper thing at all, and if you really have a regard for them, La Fleur, I think it is your duty to make them understand this. You might not care to speak plainly, of course, but you can easily make them perceive the situation, without offending them, or saying anything which an old servant might not say, in a case like this." "But, madam," said La Fleur, "what's to hinder their stopping here? There's no spot on earth that could suit them better, to my way of thinking." "La Fleur," said Miss Panney, regarding the other with moderate severity, "you ought to know that when people see a young woman like Miss Drane brought to live in a house with a handsome young gentleman, who, to all intents and purposes, is keeping a bachelor's hall,--for that girl upstairs is entirely too young to be considered a mistress of a house,--and when they know that the young lady's mother is a lady in impoverished circumstances, the people are bound to say, when they talk, that that young woman was brought here on purpose to catch the master of the house, and I don't think, La Fleur, that you would like to hear that said of Mrs. Drane." As she listened, the bodily eyes of La Fleur were contracted until they were almost shut, but her mental eyes opened wider and wider. She suspected that there was something back of Miss Panney's words. "If I heard anybody say that, madam, meaning it, I don't think they would care to say it to me again. But leaving out all that and looking at the matter with my lights, it does seem to me that if Mr. Haverley wanted a mistress for his house, and felt inclined to marry Miss Cicely Drane, he couldn't make a better choice."