banite who cares much to be well
dressed, the quietly smart attire of the arriving traveller.

"Indeed I will. Fuel first, fire afterward. But I'm fairly burning to
begin, July weather though it is. How are my hollyhocks? A splendid row?
I've dreamed of those hollyhocks!"

"They are all there--as well as one can see them above the weeds. We
would have had the grass cut for you, but didn't venture to touch so much
as a spear, lest we destroy some picturesque effect," Ellen said, giving
her friend's hand an affectionate grasp as Charlotte took her place
beside her.

"I do want to see to it all for myself. I've had the greatest difficulty
in waiting these four weeks, or should have had if I hadn't been so busy.
But now that I'm here I'll show you how to make a home out of four
chairs, three rugs, a table, a mirror, and an adorable copper bowl. Talk
of the simple life--you're going to see it lived just across the street,
you matrons with innumerable things to dust!"

"We shall be delighted to watch you do it," Ellen assured her, and Martha
gave an incredulous assent.

It was but a few hours before they saw the prophecy coming true. Miss
Ruston barely took time for luncheon, and by the time the dray containing
her modest supply of household goods was at her door she was ready for
work. A blue painter's blouse slipped over her travelling dress, her
sleeves rolled well up her shapely arms, she had plunged into the labour
of settling. She had for an assistant a woman whom Ellen had engaged for
her, and a tall youth who was the woman's son, and these two she managed
with a generalship little short of genius.

The floors had been cleaned and stained with a simple dull-brown stain a
week before, and Miss Ruston eyed them with satisfaction, uneven though
they were. She set the lad at work oiling them, demonstrating to him with
her own hands, carefully gloved, the way to do it. Every window she flung
wide, and Mrs. Kelsey was presently scrubbing away at the dim, small
panes, trying her best to make them shine to please the young lady who
from time to time stopped as she flew by to comment on her work.

"That's it, Mrs. Kelsey, you know how, don't you? I haven't much in the
way of hangings for them, so we must have them bright as mirrors. Hard to
get into the corners? Yes, I know. But it's somehow the corners that show
most. Try this hairpin under your cloth,"--she slipped one out from her
heavy locks--"you can get into the co