ere are you goin'?"

I did not answer. I hurried out of the sitting-room and out of the
house.

When I returned I found her still knitting. The circular lay on the
floor at her feet. She regarded me anxiously.

"Hosy," she demanded, "where--"

I interrupted. "Hephzy," said I, "I have been to the station to send a
telegram."

"A telegram? A TELEGRAM! For mercy sakes, who's dead?"

Telegrams in Bayport usually mean death or desperate illness. I laughed.

"No one is dead, Hephzy," I replied. "In fact it is barely possible that
someone is coming to life. I telegraphed Mr. Campbell to engage passage
for you and me on some steamer leaving for Europe next week."

Hephzibah turned pale. The partially knitted sock dropped beside the
circular.

"Why--why--what--?" she gasped.

"On a steamer leaving next week," I repeated. "You want to travel,
Hephzy. Jim says I must. So we'll travel together."

She did not believe I meant it, of course, and it took a long time to
convince her. But when at last she began to believe--at least to the
extent of believing that I had sent the telegram--her next remark was
characteristic.

"But I--I can't go, Hosy," declared Hephzibah. "I CAN'T. Who--who would
take care of the cat and the hens?"

CHAPTER IV

In Which Hephzy and I and the Plutonia Sail Together

The week which began that Wednesday afternoon seems, as I look back to
it now, a bit of the remote past, instead of seven days of a year ago.
Its happenings, important and wonderful as they were, seem trivial and
tame compared with those which came afterward. And yet, at the time,
that week was a season of wild excitement and delightful anticipation
for Hephzibah, and of excitement not unmingled with doubts and
misgivings for me. For us both it was a busy week, to put it mildly.

Once convinced that I meant what I said and that I was not "raving
distracted," which I think was her first diagnosis of my case, Hephzy's
practical mind began to unearth objections, first to her going at all
and, second, to going on such short notice.

"I don't think I'd better, Hosy," she said. "You're awful good to ask me
and I know you think you mean it, but I don't believe I ought to do it,
even if I felt as if I could leave the house and everything alone. You
see, I've lived here in Bayport so long that I'm old-fashioned and funny
and countrified, I guess. You'd be ashamed of me."

I smiled. "When I am ashamed of you, Hephzy," I replied