t it is with you. You're not quite right
in your mind. You need to be looked after."

"Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don't you trouble to look after me,
will you?"

"No one will if I don't."

"I hope no one will."

There was a pause.

"I'm ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse," said Miss Pinnegar.

"_I'm_ leaving it for ever," said Alvina.

"I should think so," said Miss Pinnegar.

Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:

"Your poor father! Your poor father!"

"I'm sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?"

"You're a lost girl!" cried Miss Pinnegar.

"Am I really?" laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.

"Yes, you're a lost girl," sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
despair.

"I like being lost," said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.

"Don't fret, Miss Pinnegar," she said. "Don't be silly. I love to be
with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if
I don't--" her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar's heavy arm till
it hurt--"I wouldn't lose a minute of him, no, not for anything
would I."

Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.

"You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse," she said, hopeless.

"Never mind," said Alvina, kissing her. "Woodhouse isn't heaven and
earth."

"It's been my home for forty years."

"It's been mine for thirty. That's why I'm glad to leave it." There
was a pause.

"I've been thinking," said Miss Pinnegar, "about opening a little
business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there."

"I believe you'd be happy," said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
still.

"I don't want to stay here, anyhow," she said. "Woodhouse has
nothing for me any more."

"Of course it hasn't," said Alvina. "I think you'd be happier away
from it."

"Yes--probably I should--now!"

None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
dumpy, odd old woman.

They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.

"Would you like to see the house?" said Alvina to Ciccio.

He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked
quickly and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without
criticism.

"This was my mother's little sitting-room," she said. "She sat here
for years, in this chair."

"Always here?" he said, looking into Alvina's face.

"Yes. She