"Do you know, it doesn't seem to me as if I would go this time," said Ladybird, thoughtfully; "it seems to me as if I would stay here years and years, until I get to be a dear old lady like you," and she patted the top of Miss Priscilla's head. Then she danced out of the room, and out to the garden, singing as she went: "I am not going away to-day; I'm going to stay and stay and stay." When the luncheon-bell rang, she danced back again, and seeing a letter on the hall-table addressed to Mr. Marks, she tore it into bits and threw it into the waste basket. The gay good humor of their visitor was infectious, and the Flint ladies laughed and chatted over their luncheon, so that the meal was nearly over before Miss Priscilla said: "Mr. Marks will call for you at three o'clock, Lavinia." "I don't think he will," replied the child, "because I tore up that letter you wrote to him and threw it away." "What!" gasped Miss Priscilla. "This is too much!" "Well, you see, aunty, there was nothing else to do. If he'd got that letter he would have come, and I don't want him to come, so I tore it up. Don't write another." "I won't," said Miss Priscilla, in an ominous voice, and snapping her teeth together with a click. But half an hour later the Primrose Hall carriage went down toward the village, and inside of it sat a very determined-looking old lady. She went to Mr. Marks's office and asked him to get his wagon and follow her home at once, and bring back the young miss and her luggage. "That firebrand as I saw at your house this morning?" exclaimed the old countryman. "Wal, I guess she won't be so easy brung." He chuckled to himself as he drove along the road behind Miss Priscilla Flint; and when they reached the farm-house, he waited decorously for further orders. Then the hunt began. For Ladybird was nowhere to be found. Miss Priscilla called in vain. Then Miss Dorinda called. Then they went up and looked in the room which Ladybird had appropriated as her own. Her three trunks stood there wide open and empty. Their contents were all around: on the bed, on the bureaus, on the chairs, and many of them on the floor. But no trace of the missing child. Then Miss Priscilla called the servants. "The little girl is hiding somewhere," she explained, "and she must be found." "Yes, 'm," Bridget said; and she began systematically to search the house from attic to cellar. Matthew shook his old head doubtfully. "I'm thinkin' yez'll niver find her," he said. "She was a spookish piece, an' the likes of her flies up chimbleys an' out of windies an' niver appears ag'in." Martha, much mystified, stared helplessly around the room, and in doing so noticed a bit of paper pinned to the pin-cushion. She handed it to Miss Priscilla, who read: Aunty, Aunty, Do not look for me; Until you send that man away, I'll stay just where I be. "Oh," groaned Miss Priscilla, "what _can_ I do? We _must_ find her!"