o remind me if
I forget. Oh, I must hurry in now, poor Mary is sitting by the fire all
this time holding Joan, she will be roasted alive."

Audrey made no reply to her sister's suggestion. She liked things to be
dainty, and clean, but she did not like the task of making them so; and to
expect her to wash the dishes herself was really rather too much!

The head of a house did not expect to have to do the work herself.
Her part was to tell others what to do, and see that they did it.
At least that was her opinion.

CHAPTER VIII.

The next two or three days simply raced by, in what, to Audrey, seemed a
hopeless struggle against all odds. It certainly was a struggle, but not
quite a hopeless one, for by the time Thursday dawned bright and
beautiful, a day to cheer even the most uncheerful, many small changes had
been wrought in the Vicarage and in the garden. And Audrey had brought
them about. Not by herself, certainly, but by the simple process of
worrying others until they did what she wanted done.

It is only fair, though, to admit that hers had been the ruling spirit.
If it had not been for her, none of the improvements would have been made.

Mary had cleaned all the windows, Faith had, somehow, managed to get rods,
and had straightened all the blinds. By offering a ha'penny to the one
who swept and raked the garden paths most thoroughly, the garden path was
swept and raked until the weeds and the soiled gravel had been turned over
and buried out of sight, and with no worse damage than a bump on Tom's
forehead, where the handle of the rake had struck him, and some tears on
Debby's part because she had lost the prize.

Job Toms too had even been coaxed into bringing a scythe and cutting the
grass.

"It would look quite nice if Faith had not made that silly bed all along
that side," Audrey admitted.

This was Faith's reward for getting up early, and slaving through the
whole of a long hot day to remove the worn turf from a narrow strip of the
lawn, the whole length of the path, and dig over the moist brown earth
beneath. "I would do the other side too," she said, generously, when she
displayed her handiwork, "only I really believe my eyes would drop out if
I stooped any more. You see I'd only the trowel to do it with."

"I suppose that is why you have made such a mess, and the bed is all
crooked. You should have left it for a gardener to do," said Audrey,
ungraciously. "Of course, the turf shoul