Belle and Hortense and Flossie were bubbling over with the desire to ask Miss Van Ramsden if _she_ knew that Helen was a rich girl and not a poor one. But there was no opportunity. The caller broached the reason for her visit at once, when she saw Mr. Starkweather. "We are going to ask a great favor of you, sir," she said, shaking hands. "And it does seem like a very great impudence on our part. But please remember that, as children, we were all very much attached to her. You see," pursued Miss Van Ramsden, "there are the De Vorne girls, and Jo and Nat Paisley, and Adeline Schenk, and some of the Blutcher boys and girls--although the younger ones were born in Europe--and Sue Livingstone, and Crayton Ballou. Oh! there really is a score or more." "Ahem!" said Mr. Starkweather, not only solemnly, but reverently. These were names he worshipped. He could have refused such young people nothing--nothing!--and would have told Miss Van Ramsden so had what she said next not stricken him dumb for the time. "You see, some of us have called on Nurse Boyle, and found her so bright and so delighted with our coming, that we want to give her a little tea-party to-morrow afternoon. It would be so delightful to have her greet the girls and boys who used to be such friends of hers in the time of Mr. Cornelius, right up there in those cunning rooms of hers. "We always used to see her in the nursery suite, and there are the same furniture, and hangings, and pictures, and all. And Nurse Boyle herself is just the same--only a bit older--Ah! girls!" she added, turning suddenly to the three sisters, "you don't know what it means to have been cared for, and rocked, and sung to, when you were ill, perhaps, by Mary Boyle! You missed a great deal in not having a Mary Boyle in your family." "_Mary Boyle!_" gasped Mr. Starkweather. "Yes. Can we all come to see her to-morrow afternoon? I am sure if you tell Mrs. Olstrom, your housekeeper will attend to all the arrangements. Helen knows about it, and she'll help pour the tea. Mary thinks there is nobody quite like Helen." These shocks were coming too fast for Mr. Starkweather. Had anything further occurred that evening to torment him it is doubtful if he would have got through it as gracefully as he did through this call. May Van Ramsden went away assured that no obstacle would be placed in the way of Mary Boyle's party in the attic. But neither Mr. Starkweather, nor his three daughters, could really look straight into each other's faces for the remainder of that evening. And they were all four remarkably silent, despite the exciting things that had so recently occurred to disturb them.