going along to keep house and play mother for them. Isn't it
lovely? I'll tell you all about it to-morrow when you come down to
pick out your things. Be sure to come early, because I want to get
started packing the first thing in the morning. Mr. Luddington, the
children's guardian, is coming to-night to complete the arrangements,
and we expect to get away just as soon as I can get packed up. So come
early."

The engine purred softly for a rhythmical second, and the car slid
quickly away from the door.

"But--the very idea!" snorted Aunt Ellen. "Julia Cloud!" she fairly
shouted. "Stop! You had no right in the world to go ahead and make
plans without consulting me!"

But the car was beyond ear-shot now, and Leslie was waving a pretty,
tantalizing hand from the back seat.

"The very idea!" Ellen Robinson gasped to the autumn landscape as she
stood alone and watched the car, a mere speck down the road, on its
way to town. "The idea!" And then as if for self-justification: "Poor
mother! What would she think if she could know? Well, I wash my hands
of her."

But Ellen Robinson did not wash her hands of her sister. Instead, she
found that it was going to be very hard indeed to wash her hands of
her own affairs without her sister's help. She had, in fact, been
counting on that help for the last several years, after her mother
became an invalid and she knew that it was only a matter of time
before Julia's hands would be set free for other labor. It was quite
too disconcerting now, after having got along all these years on the
strength of the help that was to come, to find her capable sister
snatched away from her by two young things in this ridiculous way.

They talked it over at supper, and Herbert was almost savage about it,
as if in some way his wife had misrepresented the possibilities, and
led him to expect the assistance that would come from her sister and
save him from paying wages to a servant.

"Well, she'll be good and sick of it inside of three months, mark
my words; and then she'll come whining back and want us to take her
in;--be glad enough to get a home. So don't you worry. But what I
want understood is this: _She's not going to find it so easy to get
back._ See? You make her thoroughly understand that. You better go
down to-morrow and pick out everything you want. Take plenty. You
can't tell but something may happen to the house, and the furniture
burn up. We might as well have it as anybody. And you m