."

"The under side of your shoe leather, Unavella?" Miss Diana lifted her
pretty shoe and held it up for inspection. "Do you see anything wrong
with that?"

The faithful soul threw her apron over her head with a sob. "Oh, Miss
Di-an!" she wailed, "it means the company's all a set of cheats, an' the
biggest rogue of the lot hez lit out--run away--an' taken the money the
Gin'rel left you along with him."

CHAPTER XX.

Miss Diana received the news in absolute silence. The brave daughter of
a brave father, she would make no moan, but the sweetness seemed to have
suddenly gone from the flowers and the light out of the sky.

Unavella looked at her in amazement. She was used to the stormy grief
which finds vent in tears and groans. "It beats me how different folks
takes things!" she ejaculated mentally. "Well, she'll need suthin' to
keep her strength up all the more now she ain't got nuthin' to support
her;" and, gathering peas and pods into her apron with a mighty sweep of
her arm, she marched into her kitchen in a fever of sympathetic
indignation and evolved a dinner which was a masterpiece of culinary
skill.

Miss Diana forced herself to eat something. She knew if she did not,
Unavella would be worried, and she possessed that peculiar regard for
the feelings of others which would not allow her to consider her own.

"You are a wonderful cook, Unavella," she said, with a pathetic
cheerfulness which did not deceive her faithful handmaiden, who, as she
confided afterwards to a friend, wuz weepin' bitter gall tears in her
mind, though she kep' a calm front outside, for she wuzn't goin' ter be
outdid in pluck by that little bit of sweetness. "I shall be able to
give you a beautiful character."

She lifted her hand with a deprecating gesture as Unavella was about to
burst forth with a stormy denial.

"Not yet, please, Unavella; not just yet. Let me have time to think a
little before you say anything. I feel rather shaken. The news was so
very unexpected, you see," she said with a shadowy smile, which Unavella
averred "cut her heart clean in two." "But everything is just right,
Unavella, that happens to the Lord's children, you know. Things look a
little misty now, but I shall see the sunlight again by and bye. In the
meantime there is this delicious dinner. Someone ought to be reaping the
benefit of it. Suppose you take it to poor Mrs. Dixon? She enjoys
anything tasty so much and she cannot afford to buy dainties