"They are for my cousin Dorel's orphans. Pick up, Bonny. Open the windows. Mind you keep Jetty with you. Don't let him go into the kitchen. I am sure they feed him. I shall not be very late--not later than twelve." Mrs. Darling went down the stairs, followed by Bonnet with her mantle and fan, and Jetty, who leaped and yapped in the delusion that he was going to be taken for a walk. The gentleman waiting below came forward to take Mrs. Darling's hand. Mrs. Bonnet listened to the exchange of polite expressions between them with no small degree of impatience; it seemed to her they might just as well have made these communications later, in the carriage. At last and at last they were gone. With the clap of the door behind them the whole atmosphere of the house changed as by enchantment. A door slammed somewhere; a voice burst out singing below-stairs; the man in livery who had held the door for Mrs. Darling and her reverend cousin leaned over the banisters and shouted, heartily, "Catherine! I say, Catherine!" Mrs. Bonnet fairly scampered up-stairs, with the mistaken Jetty, who thought this was the beginning of a romp, hard after her, trying to catch her by the heels. She entered Mrs. Darling's room with no affectation of soft-stepping, threw up the window--the sharp outer air cut into the scented warmth like a silver axe--and began pushing things briskly into their places. She digressed from her labors a moment to get from the closet a black moiré, which she examined, then replaced. Now came a rap at the door, and a voice only a shade less respectful than before, saying, "Miss Pittock is waiting below, ma'am." "Very well, I will be down directly," said Mrs. Bonnet. "Come here, Jetty!" Jetty, instead of coming, ran round and round among the chair legs, waving his tail in a graceful circle, eluding Mrs. Bonnet's hand not by swiftness, but craft. "Come here, you little fool," muttered Bonnet; and as her bidding, however severe, availed nothing, she cast Mrs. Darling's wrapper over the little beast, and got him entangled like a black-and-tan butterfly in a pocket-handkerchief. She snatched him up squirming a little, tucked him tightly under her arm, and ran up-stairs to her own chamber on the third floor. There she dropped him; and when she had donned her black coat and bonnet, gloves and galoshes, during which preparations Jetty was leaping and yapping like crazy, in the supposition again that they were going for a walk together, she turned out the light and shut the door against his wet, black nose. His reproachful barks followed her down the passage. "It's good for 'is lungs," she said, grimly, hurrying over the stairs. [Illustration: "AT LAST THEY WERE GONE"] And here at the foot was Miss Pittock, looking quite more than the lady in her mistress's last year's cape. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting, Miss Pittock."