Suddenly Matthew's face appeared in the midst of the smoke. "Don't be frightened, ma'am," he said; "it's all right now. The soot got afire in the chimbley; but we've put it out. But if the little lady hadn't been afther runnin' down an' tellin' me that the wall felt hot, I'm thinkin' the house wud have been burned to the ground." "Oh, Matthew, are you sure the fire is all out?" asked Miss Dorinda. "And are you sure my house would have burned up but for that child?" asked Miss Priscilla. "Yis, ma'am, sure as sure! An' I'll jist open the windies till the shmoke disappears." Then Miss Priscilla called, "Come down, Ladybird; it's all right now." And in a moment the child came flying down-stairs. "I put the geranium back in its place," she said, "and I left your lace handkerchief on your bureau, Aunt Dorinda; but I brought both your smell-salts bottles, 'cause I thought you might be faint from the scare. Now sit down and rest, won't you?" She hovered about her aunts, ministering to each in turn, and her caressing touch was so gentle, and her sympathy so sincere, that Miss Priscilla, who was unaccustomed to such attentions, quite forgot she had called her niece a vixen, and that, too, with good and sufficient reasons. But after a while, as her nerves became quieted and she felt more composed, Miss Priscilla Flint determined to attempt again the dismissal of her unwelcome guest. "Lavinia," she said in a tone of firm decision. "Oh, aunty, don't call me that; it makes me feel so old and grown up!" "It is your name, and I have no desire to call you by any other. Lavinia, you are my niece, and the child of my dead sister; but I am in no way inclined to take you into my home for that reason. You have some kind and winning ways, but you appear to have an ungovernable temper, which would make you impossible to live with. How dared you lock the door on me in my own house?" "Why, aunty," said Ladybird, laughing at the memory of it, "that wasn't temper, and I didn't mean to be rude; but truly, there was nothing else to do. Why, if you had been out on the veranda when my trunks came, you would have sent them back to Boston, and I didn't want them to go back; so I just left you by yourselves until the man took them up-stairs." "You think you have outwitted me, miss, but you will find that Priscilla Flint is not so easily set aside." "Oh, I'm not going to set you aside, aunty; that isn't it. I'm just going to stay here and be your little girl--yours and Aunt Dorinda's." "I think, sister, we might keep her a week on trial," said Miss Dorinda, timidly. Miss Dorinda always said everything timidly. In this respect she was not like her niece. "I shall _not_ keep her a week, nor a day; and no more hours than I can help. I am going now to write a note to Mr. Marks, and tell him to come back at once for her and her trunks. So, Miss Lavinia Lovell, you may as well get yourself ready, for this time you will have to go."