Left alone with her small charge, Jane sat down on the little green bench under the vines with a kitchen towel to hem. It was very quiet and peaceful, and the occasional distant roar of a passing trolley and the loud singing of a very fat red-breasted robin, which had its nest in one of the maples which were planted at stated intervals along the street, merely served to make the country stillness the more evident. Master Belknap was pleasantly absorbed in his endeavors to construct a two-foot mountain in the midst of the sand box, and apparently much entertained by the ceaseless action of the law of gravitation evidenced by the conduct of the unstable material at its apex. He did not look up at sound of the hasty steps which approached the house; but Jane did. Then she put down the brown towel with a displeased pucker of her white forehead. "I thought that you had gone," she said coldly. "I beg your pardon, but I wish to speak with that--er--young woman who dismissed me a half hour ago," said Mr. Towle, with exceeding politeness of manner. "I must see her. I wish to--er--explain. She was," he added thoughtfully, "an exceedingly rude person." "If you are referring to Mrs. Belknap," Jane said, "I beg to inform you that she is my mistress; she sent you away with as little ceremony as possible for several reasons which it is not necessary for me to explain." "Hum--ah!" murmured Mr. Towle. "Do you--er--mind telling me one of them?" "Oh, if you insist!" said Jane, "I told Mrs. Belknap that I did not care to talk with you, and since she very particularly wished me to be at liberty to attend to my work, which is to look after her child, and to----" Mr. Towle made a large gesture expressive of his extreme indifference to Mrs. Belknap's child and also her brown towel. "I came from England to find you, Jane," he said earnestly. "Why did you go away?" "Why shouldn't I go away--if I chose?" Jane wanted to know, with a provoking drawl. She set two stitches in her brown towel with exceeding care, then put her pretty head on one side to survey the effect. "There are at least two reasons why you should have stopped at home for every one you can give for running away," he said deliberately. "But I didn't _run away_!" denied Jane crossly. "I--I just _went_. Aunt Agatha meant to send me somewhere because she hates me, I verily believe. I preferred to go." "Nevertheless you should have stayed," he said gently. "Your position in life demanded patience and--er--pardon me--self-control. You exercised neither, it seems, and now--" His expressive look pointed the moral. Jane winced under the prick of it. "How did you ever find me?" she asked, after a long pause filled with industrious stitching on the brown towel.