"Mad? Mad?" echoed gentle Wythie. "I'm furious! Don't you go back there, either of you. She's more maddening than ever. She wants me or Prue for a servant to help Elvira--she won't have Rob." "Why, I don't believe she will," drawled Rob, with a flash of her bright eyes. "Yet I would be good for her; a discipline, not unlike a scourge." Prue thrust her head through the door between her room and the girls' chamber. She could not raise it because she was combing her fly-away locks over her face, forward from the neck, having heard that this treatment made the hair more fluffy. From the golden veil in which this enveloped her she spoke: "Wants me for a servant to help Elvira? Did you say that, Wythie? What did Mardy say?" "I didn't wait to hear--I didn't dare. I felt as though I should have apoplexy," said Wythie. "She had been saying things before that." "She's always saying things--and seeing things," remarked Rob. "The worst of the little grey house is that it stands where the hill-house overlooks it." Prue, inarticulate for a moment from the indignity offered the pretty self which she did not underestimate, found her voice. "Well, let her wait till she gets me," she said, in a tone so sarcastic as to make up for the feebleness of the retort. "We've made a 'sloka' since we came upstairs--Prue and I," said Rob. "We are going to sing it when Aunt Azraella gets too unbearable; it's better to sing things about her than to preserve your rage, as she does her sharp currants." "I'm afraid it isn't very nice," said Wythie, doubtfully. "Yes, it is; it's a lovely 'sloka.' Of course, you can't be sure it's nice till you've heard it. Just listen." And Rob sang softly: "_There is a queer person in Fayre, Who trails fury and wrath everywhere; She's a dragon-like breath, So they named her for death, And when she comes calling: Beware! We love our dear Aunt Azraella, For she lectures us--every Grey feller!_ _And she spies with her glass What does not come to pass, While our feelings we scarcely dare tell her._" Wythie could not help laughing, and felt better for it. "Now, you and Prue, sit under the tree where you can warn Mardy if anyone comes to see her. I'm going for a stroll," announced Rob, and before Wythie could object she had disappeared without wasting time on the empty ceremonial of donning a hat. Straight through the old orchard she went, climbed the fence, and took her course down the back road. She had a definite end in view. Three-quarters of a mile away lived a second cousin of her father, a blind woman, whom the Greys had from their childhood called "Cousin Peace," though her name was Charlotte. Often, when life and herself got too tumultuous for Rob, she ran down for a breath of Cousin Peace's atmosphere. She saw the pale, calm face she sought at the window as she drew near the house, and, opening the gate, she went up and leaned on the sill without speaking.