ude.

"I cannot understand, Penelope, why she was so disproportionately
grateful, for I only gave her five shillings over the two pounds rent."

"Yes, dear," I responded drily; "but you remember that the rent was for
the month, and you paid her two pounds five shillings for the week."

All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought footstools
for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing my paint
brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and offered to be the
one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for that surgical operation
should ever come. Finally, just as we were about to separate for the
night, she said, with insinuating sweetness, "You won't tell Ronald
about my mistake with the rent-money, will you, dearest and darlingest
girls?"

We are now quite ready to join in all the gaieties that may ensue when
Rosnaree welcomes its master and his guests. Our page in buttons at the
lodge gives Benella full scope for her administrative ability, which
seems to have sprung into being since she entered our service; at least,
if I except that evidence of it which she displayed in managing us when
first we met. She calls our page 'the Button Boy,' and makes his life
a burden to him by taking him away from his easy duties at the gate,
covering his livery with baggy overalls, and setting him to weed the
garden. It can never, in the nature of things, be made free from weeds
during our brief term of tenancy, but Benella cleverly keeps her slave
at work on the beds and the walks that are the most conspicuous to
visitors. The Old Hall used simply to be called 'Aunt David's house' by
the Welsh Joyces, and it was Aunt David herself who made the garden;
she who traced the lines of the flower-beds with the ivory tip of her
parasol; she who planned the quaint stone gateways and arbours and
hedge seats; she who devised the interminable stretches of paths, the
labyrinthine walks, the mazes, and the hidden flower-plots. You walk on
and on between high hedges, until, if you have not missed your way, you
presently find a little pansy or rose or lily garden. It is quite the
most unexpected and piquant method of laying out a place I have ever
seen; and the only difficulty about it is that any gardener, unless
he were possessed of unusual sense of direction, would be continually
astray in it. The Button Boy, obeying the laws of human nature, is lost
in two minutes, but requires two hours in which to find himse