"Suit me," said David. "I ain't afraid to groom horses, nor drive horses, with any man in Cumberland County. But I don't know as you could cook good enough for the young ladies." "Oh, you go 'long! He will have his joke, you see, David will," said Chloe, apologizing for her partner's light-mindedness. "Well, maybe you might speak to the lady, Miss Calista. We'll leave your trunks to Mrs. Fabian's, and then I guess we'll go to Jubalina's." "That is just what I have been expecting," said Calista, as she walked along to school with Mary. "If such things were, I should think Jael had bewitched her, as Chloe says. To think of her taking those people into the house to live with her!" "Perhaps if you had staid she would not have done it," said Mary, who had been planning for Calista a grand self-sacrifice, and did not like to have her romance destroyed. "I don't think it would have made any difference," said Calista. "One thing she wanted me for was that she might use me in her treasure-seeking scheme. And do you know she showed me a guinea which Jael professed to have found, and it was one of the very pieces which I found when I looked over grandfather's desk. I knew it, because they were all marked." "How could she come by it?" "I suppose aunt paid it to them—she has given them ever so much money already—and Jael gave it back, trusting to aunt's blindness not to recognize it. Oh dear! I wish this will business was finished; then we could soon clear out the poor old house." "I should hardly think you would wish to turn your poor aunt out of the house where she has lived so long, even if you don't want to live with her," said Mary, reproachfully. Calista faced round upon her rather sharply. "Who said I did? Or why should you suppose that one invariably means to do the very worst thing possible under the circumstances? Would you like to have any one do so by you? You said only yesterday that it was a great cross to have your mother's aunt come into the family and take up the best room, though she seems to be a very nice, kind old lady." "She smokes," said Mary. "Well, do you think it would be very much better if, instead of smoking, she addressed some insulting or sarcastic remark to you, or now and then threw a book at you for variety?" "But I have taken up my cross," said Mary, somewhat taken aback. "Would you if you could help it?" asked Calista. "Wouldn't you be glad this minute if the old lady were sent somewhere else?" Mary did not answer. "That is not my idea of taking up the cross," Calista continued. "And any way, Mary, it is my duty to obey those whom Providence has set over me, as your father says. I won't deny that I enjoy the change. It is something not to go to bed hungry, and to have a comfortable bed to sleep in." "Surely you did not go hungry?"