"Rose! Rose! you are the same incorrigible, pert, saucy girl as of yore, but you have filled my heart with joy. I am treading on air and giddy with delight. We will have ten days of undiluted rapture. Come inside and look round my home. Mother Hubbard is 'meeting for tickets' to-night, and will not be back for a good half-hour." "Meeting for what?" inquired Rose blankly. "Meeting for tickets," I repeated. "My dear old lady is a Methodist class leader, and to 'meet for tickets' is a shibboleth beyond your untutored comprehension. But the occasion is one of vast importance to her, and you are not to make fun of her." She was pleased with everything and expressed her pleasure readily. In spite of her composed manner she is a very dear girl indeed, and though she is years younger than I am she and I always hit it exactly. When she saw the tiny bed and realised that we should have to share it she laughed merrily. "_I_ will sleep next to the wall to-night," she said, "because I am very tired, and it would be annoying to be always falling out. I shall sleep so soundly that your bumping the floor will not disturb me, so you will have nothing to worry about. Then to-morrow night I will take the post of danger, and so alternately." "We might rope ourselves together," I suggested, "and fasten the ends to a stake outside the window. I don't think the bumping idea appeals to me." But Mother Hubbard planned a better way on her return, and contrived a simple and ingenious addition to the width of the bed by means of chairs and pillows, which served our purpose admirably. Over the supper table Rose told us all about her visit. "You see, I have not been quite the thing lately: nervy and irritable and that sort of nonsense, which the chief charitably construed into an indication of ill-health. He was awfully decent about it and suggested that I should see a doctor. I told him I was all right, but he insisted, so I saw Dr. Needham, and he told me I was run down and required bracing air. 'Mountain air would be better than the seaside,' he said. 'You haven't friends in Scotland or Yorkshire, I suppose?' Then I thought of you. 'I have a friend who went wrong in her head about twelve months ago,' I said (or words to that effect), 'and she ran away to the Yorkshire moors. She might take me in if I could get off.' 'The very thing,' he said. 'Will you have any difficulty with your employer?' "'I don't think so,' I replied; 'not if it is really necessary. The chief is a discriminating man, and I believe realises that my services are invaluable, and he will put up with a little temporary inconvenience in order to retain them permanently, I imagine.' You are accustomed to my modesty, Grace, and will not be surprised that I spoke with humility.