In Miss White's room, Elizabeth announced her intention of entering a convent, and it was then that Cherry-pie fumbled: she took the convent seriously! The next morning she broke the awful news to Elizabeth's uncle. It was before breakfast, and Mr. Ferguson--who had not time to read his Bible for pressure of business--had gone out into the grape-arbor in his narrow garden to feed the pigeons. There was a crowd of them about his feet, their rimpling, iridescent necks and soft gray bosoms pushing and jostling against one another, and their pink feet actually touching his boots. When Miss White burst out at him, the pigeons rose in startled flight, and Mr. Ferguson frowned. "And she says," Miss White ended, almost in tears--"she says she is going to enter a convent immejetly!" "My dear Miss White," said Elizabeth's uncle, grimly, "there's no such luck." Miss White positively reeled. Then he explained, and Cherry-pie came nearer to her employer in those ten minutes than in the ten years in which she had looked after his niece. "I don't care about Elizabeth's temper; she'll get over that. And I don't care a continental about her hair or her religion; she can wear a wig or be a Mohammedan if it keeps her straight. She has a bad inheritance, Miss White; I would be only too pleased to know that she was shut up in a convent, safe and sound. But this whim isn't worth talking about." Miss White retired, nibbling with horror, and that night Robert Ferguson went in to tell his neighbor his worries. "What _am_ I to do with her?" he groaned. "She cut off her hair?" Mrs. Richie repeated, astounded; "but why? How perfectly irrational!" "Don't say 'how irrational'; say 'how Elizabeth.'" "I wish she would try to control her temper," Mrs. Richie said, anxiously. But Mr. Ferguson was not troubled about that. "She's vain; that's what worries me. She cried all afternoon about her hair." "She needs a stronger hand than kind Miss White's," Mrs. Richie said; "why not send her to school?" And the harassed uncle sighed with relief at the idea, which was put into immediate execution.