She could leave without a sign too, she had said, but in her heart there was joy that Fate had given her to the eighth. She would not have moved a finger to stay, but since he was to return on the sixth, why-- But the very day the letter from The Bay reached her, a Seminole came up from the glades with game from King and a note. The party was considering making a longer stay, he wrote to his mother, so she need not worry in case he did not return. "I told him in my answer," said Charlotte, "that you all were going. Dear me, I'll miss you so." Then he would know, he would know, and if he did not come it would be because it was his desire not to. Molly confessed to a few bills in town. Malise had left money, yet Molly had managed to make accounts at a fruiterer's, the café, as it called itself, the drug store, the stationer's, and the two dry-goods establishments. "I'm glad you're not stingy like the Blairs," Molly told her; "you know, Malise, they're really mean. Your grandfather Blair carried you out to their gate once to see a hand-organ man and his monkey. You were too pleased for anything, and when the man finally moved away your grandfather told you, 'Say good-by to the monkey, Alexina.'" Truth to tell, Molly and Charlotte seemed to have had a fine time in the absence of their two youthful monitors. Charlotte was as wax in the naughty Molly's hands. Even now, with Alexina on the scene, Molly proceeded to put Mrs. Leroy up to a thing that never would have entered that innocent soul's head. Charlotte went mysteriously to town one morning, Peter in his best clothes driving her, and came back beaming. "I've asked some of the Aden young people out for the evening before you go," she told Alexina. "The halls and the parlours are so big, you can dance." Charlotte beamed and Molly looked innocent. Alexina gazed at Mrs. Leroy dismayed. What would the Captain, what would King William think? It would never occur to Mrs. Leroy until afterward that she could not afford such a thing. "I think we ought to do it together," said Alexina privately to her. "Molly and I owe Aden some return." Charlotte was made to see it. Had Willy come along, she would have seen it as speedily after his will, be that what it might. Whatever the Captain thought, he sat unmoved in the midst of the deluge of water and mopping that suddenly swept about him on the porch. There must have been Dutch in Charlotte somewhere, for hospitality with her meant excess of cleaning.