"By all means let them both go out for the day, my dear; you've really no right to keep them in on a legal holiday. But I confess I don't follow your 'as I was saying'; you weren't saying a word about the servants. You were talking about Jack, and about Jack's being happy." Mrs. Belknap looked justly offended. "If you would pay a little more attention to what I say to you, Jimmy, you wouldn't appear so stupid on occasions. No; I'll not explain further; you'd merely make it an excuse to tease, and very likely you'd report the whole conversation to Tom Sloan as a huge joke, and the two of you would roar over it; then I should be obliged to explain to Mrs. Sloan, and she's a perfect sieve. The whole affair would be all over town in no time, and that I simply could not endure." "I'm safe this time, Margaret," he assured her solemnly; "for, honest Injin, I haven't a ghost of an idea as to what you're trying to get at!" "I know what I'll do," cogitated his wife, waving him aside. "I'll manage it so that the girls shall leave the house a full hour before we do; they'll go to the city, of course. And I'll keep Jack here till we're off; by that time Jane will be well out of the way, and----" "O _Jane_!" "I see you are beginning to understand _now_!" said Mrs. Belknap; then she added plaintively, "I _wish_ I'd _never_ hired that girl, Jimmy!" "I suppose there's very little use in asking why you persist in hanging on to her?" said Mr. Belknap. "Don't you _see_, dear, it wouldn't do a bit of good to send her away now; indeed, I feel as if it were almost my _duty_ to keep her." Mrs. Belknap said this with the resigned air of a martyr; and Mr. Belknap wisely forebore to make any comment upon the surprising statement. * * * * * * It was delightfully fresh and breezy on the trolley car; and Jane on the front seat keenly enjoyed the noisy rush through the green, daisied fields and woods cool with shade and fragrant with wild flowers and young ferns. In the streets of the villages through which the car passed on its way to the ferry there was a brilliant flutter of flags, the unfamiliar stars and stripes looking strange and foreign in Jane's English eyes. Everywhere there were holiday crowds, little girls in white frocks and shoes, bearing wreaths and bunches of flowers; little boys in their best clothes with tiny flags in their buttonholes; women carrying babies, and men carrying lunch baskets, and other and bigger babies; showily dressed young girls with their beaux; besides a multitude of the unattached eagerly going somewhere. Jane felt herself to be very small and lonely and far from home in the midst of it all.