It was with difficulty that Ellen refrained from pouring forth the next morning the eager question, Are we going? And that she might not yield to the temptation she jabbered away while she was helping with breakfast, and gave a detailed account of the doings of the night before. Once in a while Miss Rindy gave her a quizzical look, but made no reference to the matter of such great interest to both of them.

They had just risen from the table when in rushed Mabel. “I couldn’t wait another minute,” she cried breathlessly. Then dropping on her knees at Miss Rindy’s feet and clasping her hands pleadingly, she exclaimed, “Please, dear, good lady, don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Tell me that you’re not going to turn me down, but that you are going.”

“Going? Where?” answered Miss Rindy teasingly with the same quizzical smile she had given Ellen.

“To Beatty’s Island.”

“Oh, that’s the name of the place you were talking about yesterday, is it?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mabel was still on her knees. “I sha’n’t get up till you say you are going,” she continued.

“It would be too bad to allow you to endure such a penance, so——” Miss Rindy paused and continued to smile down on the supplicant.

“So—so——” Mabel waited a moment expectantly. “You are going, aren’t you?” she said at last.

And Miss Rindy answered, “I are, you are, we are.”

Up sprang Mabel to give her a violent hug. “You dear, dear thing!” she exclaimed.

“Here, here, look out,” cried Miss Rindy. “I don’t allow such demonstrations.”

“I must do something to express my joy,” said Mabel. “‘My heart with rapture thrills, and dances with the daffodils.’ Be a daffodil, Ellen.” She caught Ellen around the waist and the two went off in a wild dance, scaring Wipers out of his wits, and causing Miss Rindy to cry out, “If this is the way you two are going to behave, I’ll take back what I said and will stay at home.”

“I’ll be good, indeed I will,” promised Mabel, dropping into a chair and folding her hands meekly.

“Then let’s talk business,” returned Miss Rindy, herself taking a seat. “You spoke of taking a cook along. Would it be possible to engage one of your grandmother’s servants? If her house is to be closed, it might be a good idea.”

Mabel shook her head. “Wouldn’t do at all. They are all so high and mighty that any one of them would leave on the first boat. They would scorn a simple way of living, and would require all sorts of things that Beatty’s Island doesn’t furnish. No, no, we must have a different sort.”

“Why not Beulah?” Ellen spoke up. “She is a nice comfortable kind, used to our ways, and I believe she would be willing to go.”

“Where is she? Where is she?” asked Mabel eagerly.

“She’ll be along after a while; she is not one given to undue haste, but she gets there in course of time. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. She is no sylph, and large bodies move slowly.”

“I don’t care how big she is, so she does our work, is a good cook, and is clean and honest.”

“She is all that. Her chief fault is an overgrown idea of her own importance, but Cousin Rindy knows how to manage her, and it would be all right if we could induce her to go.”

“And stay,” put in Miss Rindy grimly.

The upshot of the matter was that Beulah consented to go, though not without some demur. “It terrible fur off, ain’t it?” she protested. “Are it crost dem waters where you went to tend de sojers, Miss Rindy?”

“O dear, no,” Miss Rindy reassured her. “I was days in crossing, and here we shall leave one afternoon and get there the next day at noon, Miss Wickham tells us.”

“Where we stays at night?”

“On the train if we go by rail; on the boat if we go by water.”

Beulah considered this, and Mabel struck in with the conciliatory question, “Which way would you rather go, Beulah?”

“She will go the way we do unless she prefers to go up alone, in which case she can choose her own route,” said Miss Rindy severely.

Beulah’s feathers drooped at once. “’Deed, Miss Rindy, I skeered to go all dat long ways by mahse’f; I goes when yuh does, an’ trabbles de same. Dat is,” she continued, her dignity again rising, “if so be I does go.”

“You know you’re going, Beulah,” said Miss Rindy decidedly. “You wouldn’t throw away such a good chance as this. Of course you’re going.”

“Yas’m, I ’specs I is,” replied Beulah meekly.

So that matter was settled, though Beulah changed her mind more than once before June. “She teeters up and down like a seesaw,” declared Miss Rindy. “I don’t believe she has a notion of not going; it is only that she wants to impress us with her importance. I’ll fix her.”

And fix her she did, for one morning when Beulah was declaring that she didn’t know after all that she would go,—it was so far,—Miss Rindy turned upon her. “Now, look here, Beulah,” she said, “I’ve had enough of this will and won’t. You’ve got to make up your mind this very minute or I’ll write to Miss Wickham and tell her to put an advertisement for a cook in the Baltimore papers. No fear that she won’t get plenty of answers. No more nonsense, you understand. Now, which is it, go or stay?” Miss Rindy fixed her with a glittering eye.

Beulah fumbled with the edge of her apron, turning her head this way and that. “Yuh so up an’ down, Miss Rindy,” she made complaint. “I nuver see anybody with such millingtary ways. I ’specs yuh learns ’em whilst yuh was follerin’ eroun’ dem sojers. It’s jes’ lak yuh stands me up aginst a wall an’ says, ‘Shoot!’”

“Shoot!” cried Miss Rindy so suddenly that Beulah gave an elephantine jump.

“Law, Miss Rindy,” she cried, “yuh skeers me outen a year’s growth.”

“Maybe that would be a good thing to do, if it affected your girth,” returned Miss Rindy laughing. “Now, look here, Beulah, you know that you’re nothing but a poor worm; that hymn you were singing this morning says so, and the way you crawl anybody would know it was true. We’re willing to take you with us, worm though you be, but if you don’t want to go, just say so at once without any more shilly-shallying, but I shall have my opinion of you, and it won’t be only a worm that I shall call you to your class leader. You gave me your word that you were going, and you know what happens to those that don’t speak the truth; if you don’t know, just look in Revelation, twenty-first chapter, twenty-seventh verse.”

“Law, Miss Rindy, yuh sho does skeer me; yuh wuss’n de preacher.”

“I’m glad of it; you need some one to be.”

Beulah stood, still fingering her apron. Presently she asked, “Which a-way yuh is goin’, Miss Rindy?”

“The quickest way, I think. We can take the Hell Gate route and reach Portland early in the morning.” Miss Rindy’s lips twitched as she said this.

“Den I stays. I don’t go no such way. No, ma’am, it’s too dangersome. I don’t keer what the preacher say. I doesn’t trus’ mah body near no hell gate.”

Miss Rindy laughed. “You are a silly creature, Beulah; that’s only the name of what used to be a dangerous spot in the East River. It is perfectly safe. You’ll be on the train, and won’t know when you get there.”

However it required a deal of explanation to convince Beulah, but finally she gave in, and later in the day was inspired to sing with great earnestness, “The gospel train are comin’; I hears it close to han’.”

In the meantime Ellen had made known to her various friends that she was to be Mabel Wickham’s guest for the summer.

“It will be perfectly lovely for you, but very sorrowful for me,” sighed Caro. However, she did not delay in spreading the news, specially delighting in giving the information to Florence Ives.

“Ain’t it a shame she didn’t stay long enough for me to give her a tea?” said Florence. “Then she might have invited me, too. I suppose it’s to Bar Harbor they go. I wisht we could take a cottage there, but Papa says it’s too highbrow for him.”

Caro did not enlighten her further, though later on Frank did, and when she learned the location of Mabel’s cottage her desire toward Maine was considerably lessened. “No wonder she was willing to invite Ellen to a stupid little place like that,” she scoffed. “I know I wouldn’t want to go, and I’m glad I’m not invited.”

“You needn’t be afraid that you’d have a chance to turn down any invitation of Miss Wickham’s,” returned Frank scornfully. “She doesn’t run with girls of your type.”

“Pff!” ejaculated Florence loftily. “I reckon I’m good enough to go wherever you go, and anyway it is a nice way you have of speaking of your sister.”

“We may be nouveau riche, but I hope I’m neither a grafter nor a toady,” replied Frank, a remark which made no impression whatever upon Florence, but which in the future g............