not come to the table. That
will make it all the funnier when we tell him. I can eat my supper
anywhere, and I will go upstairs and wait on you, which will be better
sport than sitting down at the table with you."

"But I do not like that," said Miriam. "I will not have you go without
your supper until we have finished."

"My dear Miriam!" exclaimed Dora, "what is a supper in comparison with
such a jolly bit of fun as this? Let me go on as the new cook. And now
we must hurry and get these things on the table. It will make things a
great deal easier for me, if they can eat before it is time to light
the lamps."

When Miriam went to call the gentlemen to supper, the doctor said to
her:--

"Your brother has told me that you have a new servant, and that she is so
preposterous as to wish to take her meals with you, but that he does not
intend to allow it. Now, I say to you, as I said to him, that if she
expected to sit at the table before I came, she must do it now. I am used
to that sort of thing, and do not mind it a bit. In the families of the
farmers about here, with whom I often take a meal, it is the custom for
the daughter of the family to cook, to wait on the table, and then sit
down with whomever may be there, kings or cobblers. I beg that you will
not let my coming make trouble in your household."

Miriam looked at her brother.

"All right," said Ralph, with a smile, "if the doctor does not mind, I
shall not. And now, do let us have something to eat."

CHAPTER XIII

DORA'S NEW MIND

When Ralph Haverley made up his mind to agree to anything, he did it with
his whole soul, and if he had had any previous prejudices against it, he
dismissed them; so as he sat at supper with the doctor and his sister he
was very much amused at being waited upon by a woman in a pink sunbonnet.
That she should wear such a head-covering in the house was funny enough
in itself, but the rest of her dress was also extremely odd, and she kept
the front of her dark projecting bonnet turned downward or away, as if
she had never served gentlemen before, and was very much overpowered by
bashfulness. But for all that she waited very well, and with a light
quickness of movement unusual in a servant.

"I am afraid, doctor," said Miriam, when the pink figure had gone
downstairs to replenish the plate of rolls, "that you will miss your
dinner. I have heard that you have a most wonderful cook."

"She is indeed a mistress of her ar