Everybody in Cedarville knew and respected General Haines. His ancestors for four generations had lived and died in the fine old mansion which he now occupied. The General was commonly considered a "character." He was dignified in appearance and irascible in temper; a perfect martinet on the subject of deportment in the rising generation; a stern enemy to cowardice and untruthfulness, while in many other matters he was as impracticable as a babe and as timorous as an old lady. His face was bearded and stern; his voice terrible. Whenever he lost his temper, which was every other minute, he shouted as though he had been at the head of an army. His heart was tender withal, and altogether he was as remarkable a gentleman as one often meets.

He was unmarried because he had never known a woman the equal of his mother, whose memory he adored. He had lived, since his mother's death, a life of comparative isolation in the old Haines' mansion, which was conducted as nearly as possible after the fashion of the last century, for the General hated innovations. He rarely left home, and he had not seen the Walcott twins since their babyhood.

In his housekeeper, Sarah, General Haines had a counterpart to the full as eccentric as himself. Warm-hearted, quick-tempered, and sharp-tongued, Sarah was the only person for whom the General felt wholesome awe. She ruled him completely; strangely enough she considered him the reverse of forbidding. This is not so singular, perhaps, in the light of the fact that the General seldom made a move without first consulting Sarah; when he did he generally regretted it!

His letter to Mr. Walcott was an instance where he had acted without orders, and when his nephew telegraphed that Gay would arrive on the noon train from New York, on the 8th of August, the doughty General realized what he had done. He had bidden a guest, possibly a troublesome one, to his house without Sarah's knowledge. No wonder he trembled and carried Mr. Walcott's telegram crumpled in his pocket two hours before he mentioned it!

On the eventful evening that May and Gay received their sentence of banishment, and at about the same hour, General Haines paced back and forth on the broad porch of his house, with the terrible telegram in his pocket. As he walked, he called himself a coward, and declared over and over again that he would be master in his own house!

This device for promoting courage he repeated several times, but it would not work. At the end of a half hour he was no better prepared to face Sarah than he had been in the beginning. Just as he was repeating for the fiftieth time the dreadful fib that he would be master in his own house or he would know the reason why, Sarah passed the porch. She wore a white dimity sunbonnet, although the sun had gone down in the west, and carried a small watering-pot. She had been giving her asters a shower-bath by way of encouraging them to flower early. She did not appear to notice General Haines.

"Sarah," said the General.

The sunbonneted head turned in his direction, but there was no other evidence of interest.

"Sarah, let us take tea in the library, this evening," the General continued, in what he believed to be a persuasive tone.

"Very well," came from the depths of the sunbonnet.

The General had intended to speak of the telegram, but there was something ominous in the movements of that hidden head, and he decided to temporize. "Ahem!" he began, "I shall have something to say to you, then."

Thus ended the dialogue between the General and the sunbonnet, for Sarah passed on without replying.

"I wonder what mischief he's in, now?" she said to herself, a minute later. "Something, I'll be bound!"

One would have said that she spoke of a child of tender years, instead of an old gentleman of sixty, with a temper so peppery that no one in the village dared oppose it.

Little maid Phyllis, whose life Sarah made a burden by perpetual instruction in housewifery, brought the tea into the library, just as the General entered. Sarah was already there, seated at the tea-table, brushing imaginary shreds of lint off the burnished surface of the copper tea-kettle.

"Phyllis, you should never wipe this kettle with a cloth that is the least mite damp," Sarah said.

"Yes'm," Phyllis answered.

"You may go," Sarah added.

"Yes'm," and the door closed after Phyllis. Phyllis' vocabulary was reduced to the single word "Yes'm;" it was the only word that did not give offense to her mistress, who had her own views concerning humility in serving maids.

Sarah at the tea-table made an exceedingly pleasing picture. Her comely figure was clad in a remarkable flowered brilliant, of a style so ancient, as to suggest the thought that she had robbed the cedar chest of an old-time gentlewoman to procure it. A fine lawn kerchief and an apron of the same material completed an attire as picturesque as that of Mistress This or Dame That in some old comedy.

Nor was General Haines' appearance less picturesque than that of his housekeeper. He prided himself upon being and looking "a gentleman of the old school." His attire was modeled after that of his great-grandfather, a redoubtable general of Washington's time. He wore knee breeches, satin waistcoat, black silk hose, and low shoes with handsome buckles. He even went so far in his imitation of the "old school" as to carry a snuff-box of fine workmanship, but he was too modern in his taste to use the snuff.

Picturesque and comely as were these figures at the tea-table, one at least, was as uncomfortable as it would be possible for any one to be in clothes of the latest mode. After three cups of tea General Haines had not acquired sufficient courage to produce the telegram that fairly burned in his pocket. He had hoped that Sarah might be curious enough to ask what he desired to say to her, but this was precisely what she did not intend to do. She had measured lances with the General a good many times, and knew the transparent tricks he employed to get the better of her. "If he's got anything to say let him say it, not try to make me commit myself before he has opened his head!" her thoughts ran.

At length he had to "say it," and he began,—

"I—expect—I expect a—a—boy on the noon train to-morrow!" He tried to speak carelessly, just as if he had been in daily receipt of boys by the noon train for years!—but his attempt was not a success, and he knew it.

"So that's what he's been up to!" thought Sarah. She said, "We don't need a boy; we've help enough on the place."

"He isn't help, he's a visitor."

"Oh!"

"My grand nephew."

"Oh!"

"His mother is the lady whose portrait hangs in my study."

"Oh!"

It was plain that Sarah was deeply offended. She rose and swept toward the door like a tragedy queen, and the General did not venture to ask her to remain.

"I should think," she said, pausing on the threshold, "that you would know by this time—deep emphasis on "this time,"—"that I am not always ready for a great houseful of company."

"Great houseful of company!" shouted the General, who had kept his temper as long as he was able. "One small boy is not 'a houseful of company,' madam!"

"He is worse!" retorted Sarah, "one small boy is worse than a barrel of monkeys!—you will see!"

She went out, closing the door after her with considerable unnecessary force—it would have been a genuine slam in one of less mature years—leaving the General wiping his brow with his flowered silk handkerchief.