ast from sheer want of breath. But by the time
she had done Miss Patch had checked her tears and raised her head,
and was staring at Jessie with wide, bright, half-frightened eyes,
her face flushed and excited.

"I--it--oh no, it can't be; but--but, oh, how heavenly it sounds to a
lonely body like me!" she gasped.

"But it _can_ be," cried eager Jessie. "I am sure it can, and it
would be lovelier even than it sounds."

"But how could I manage?" gasped Miss Patch, looking dejected again.
"Think of my lameness--and there's my furniture."

Jessie looked about her. "There isn't _very_ much of it," she said
thoughtfully. "I am sure it isn't enough to stop your coming."
And she was right, for, after all, there was but the old-fashioned
bed and chest of drawers, a chair or two and a couple of tables, and
a few boxes and other trifles. "Would you go if your things got
there without any trouble--I mean, without any more trouble than
changing houses would be? You see," she added wisely, "if you don't
like the new people who are coming, you may _have_ to change, after
all, and then you won't have any one to help you."

The look of dread came back into poor Miss Patch's tired eyes.
So gloomy a prospect determined her.

"You are right!" she gasped; "it would be terrible--yes. I'll go--I
do believe I will. Oh, my! it's a dreadfully big undertaking, but--
but I'll go, yes, I will. I will make up my mind; and--and I won't
go back from it. I am terribly given to being a coward, Jessie."

Her mind once made up Miss Patch did not swerve again, and from that
time her face grew brighter. And after all it was not such a very
big undertaking--not nearly as bad as she had feared, for everything
seemed to fall out for her in a perfectly marvellous way, and most of
her troubles were taken off her shoulders before she had been able to
realize them.

A few letters passed between Jessie and Miss Grace, and then between
Mrs. Lang and Miss Grace, and then all seemed to come about so
smoothly and easily that Miss Patch scarcely realized all that was
being accomplished. Mrs. Lang insisted on paying the charges for the
furniture being carried to Springbrook. Tom Salter saw to the
packing of them all and sending them off by train; and then, oddly
enough, Miss Grace Barley found that she had business in London, and
would be returning to Springbrook on the very day Jessie and Miss
Patch were expected there, and would travel down with