very nice and kind to me you
will press me to remain ten days with you, and I shall yield to
pressure, after the customary formal and insincere protests. Then you
will put on your hat and walk with me down to Fawkshill station, and as
there are no cabs to be had there we will bring up my bag between us."

"_That_ we need not do," I said. "There are half a dozen strong boys
in the village, any one of whom would fetch your belongings for love of
me and threepence of your money."

"Happy Grace!" she sighed; "'love rules the court, the camp, the
grove,' as saith the poet. Be it even so. Summon the favoured swain,
discharge his debt, and I will be in thine."

"Rose! Rose! you are the same incorrigible, pert, saucy girl as of
yore, but you have filled my heart with joy. I am treading on air and
giddy with delight. We will have ten days of undiluted rapture. Come
inside and look round my home. Mother Hubbard is 'meeting for tickets'
to-night, and will not be back for a good half-hour."

"Meeting for what?" inquired Rose blankly.

"Meeting for tickets," I repeated. "My dear old lady is a Methodist
class leader, and to 'meet for tickets' is a shibboleth beyond your
untutored comprehension. But the occasion is one of vast importance to
her, and you are not to make fun of her."

She was pleased with everything and expressed her pleasure readily. In
spite of her composed manner she is a very dear girl indeed, and though
she is years younger than I am she and I always hit it exactly. When
she saw the tiny bed and realised that we should have to share it she
laughed merrily.

"_I_ will sleep next to the wall to-night," she said, "because I am
very tired, and it would be annoying to be always falling out. I shall
sleep so soundly that your bumping the floor will not disturb me, so
you will have nothing to worry about. Then to-morrow night I will take
the post of danger, and so alternately."

"We might rope ourselves together," I suggested, "and fasten the ends
to a stake outside the window. I don't think the bumping idea appeals
to me."

But Mother Hubbard planned a better way on her return, and contrived a
simple and ingenious addition to the width of the bed by means of
chairs and pillows, which served our purpose admirably.

Over the supper table Rose told us all about her visit. "You see, I
have not been quite the thing lately: nervy and irritable and that sort
of nonsense, which the chief charitably c