"How strange it seems without the boys!" said Jean.

"And Uncle John!" said Margaret.

"And Hugh!" said Peggy. "I wish they hadn't gone."

"Oh, no, you don't, Peggy!" said Margaret. "It was such a great chance, to have the day on that wonderful yacht. Just think what a good time they are having! I only wish you could have gone too, but it is a bachelor party, you see."

"Of course! Oh, I want them to have the fun, and it was very good of Captain Storm to let Uncle John take them all. Yes, they will have a glorious time; only—well, we miss them so horribly. Dear me, Margaret, isn't it strange that you should get to know people so well in such a short time? Why, I seem to know Gerald and Phil as well—better, in some ways, than I know Hugh. But then, I never feel as if I understood Hugh, he is so—he knows so much. Margaret, dear, it makes me happy all through to have you and Hugh know each other, and be such friends."

"Indeed, it cannot make you so happy as it does me, Peggy," said Margaret, smiling. "He is a wonderful person, that brother of yours. Yes, he does know a most amazing amount, but he never makes one uncomfortable with his knowledge, as some clever people do. He is like a delightful book, that you can read when you want to, and when you don't it stays quiet on its shelf. When I want to know about anything, and Uncle John is somewhere else, or is busy, I just turn over a page of Hugh, and there I have it. Oh, by the bye, Grace, what was that stanza he was quoting to you this morning, just before he went away? Don't you remember? we were coming through the orchard, he and I, and we met you, and he said this. I have been trying all day to recall it."

"Keats!" said Grace, briefly.

"Yes, I know that; it was from 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' but I cannot get the whole stanza. Won't you repeat it? I know you have almost the whole of Keats by heart."

Grace hesitated, and murmured something about "a time for everything," but finally, half-reluctantly, she repeated the stanza:

"Yes," said Margaret. "Well—thank you, Grace! I just wanted to hear it in your voice; what I was thinking of was, that Hugh always knows just what to say about everything and everybody. He has the whole Golden Treasury in his head, and he always turns the right page. Do you remember the other day, when Michael was so stupid!"

"Michael is always stupid!" said Jean.

"Poor Michael! He is not very clever." (Michael was the stable-boy at Fernley, a new importation from Ireland, with a good deal of peat-bog still sticking to his brains.) "Well, the other day he was more stupid than usual, for he was sent in town to get some rolled oats that Frances wanted. Well, he brought back just plain oats; and when Frances wanted to know what he meant by that, he said, 'Sure, it's meself can rowl 'em about for yez, as well as that feller in the white jacket.' Frances explained the situation to him with more force than amiability. She was in a perfect storm, and poor Michael stood meekly, feeling of his ear as if she had actually boxed it, though really she only threatened to, and wondering what it was all about. Well, Hugh and I came along, and Hugh just looked at him, and said:

"You and Grace seem to know Hugh about a hundred times as well as Peggy and I do," said Jean, pouting a little.

"Because they are clever, my dear, and we are not," said Peggy, cheerfully. "If you would learn things, Jean, English literature and all that, you might be able to talk to Hugh. As it is—"

"Well, I think Phil and Gerald are ever so much more fun, anyhow!" said Jean, saucily. "Hugh is poky!"

Seeing an elder-sisterly cloud gathering on Peggy's brow, Margaret hastened to interfere. "Girls," she said, "I have a confession to make. I was just going to make it, when the quotations turned me off the track. You know what Peggy was saying, about our all getting to know each other so well from staying in the house together. That reminded me of something, something I am very much ashamed of; and I think it would be good for my soul to confess it. But you must promise never to tell."

"We promise! We promise!" cried all the girls.

"Margaret," said Grace, "I have been looking for your sins ever since I came, but you were too clever for me; now I shall learn."

"Not my fault," said Margaret, merrily, "if you are a bat as well as a dozen other animals, my dear. Well, girls—oh, I am ashamed, and it really is most astonishingly virtuous of me to tell you about it. Peggy, just before you came, I was very blue; deeply, darkly, most unbeautifully blue!"

"Margaret! you, blue?"

"Hear Peggy making rhymes! Yes, I, blue. You see, the children were gone, and I did miss them so, I hardly knew how to bear it. It is impossible for any one to have any idea, girls, how children, children that are little enough to need one's care, you know, and—and watching, and thinking about, and all—how they get inside your heart and just live there, all curled up in it, bless them! and these particular children are the very dearest ones that ever lived, I do believe. Well, so they were gone, and my heart seemed empty; wickedly and abominably empty, for there was my own dearest uncle, and there were you, my own Peggy, coming to spend the whole summer with me, and as if that were not joy enough for three people, let alone one, I made all kinds of plans, about studying, and teaching you housekeeping, and embroidery, and all kinds of things. We were going to read so many hours a day, and work so many hours,—my poor Peggy! you would have had an unmerciful kind of time!—and everything was going to be quiet and regular and cheerful; I never got beyond cheerfulness in my brightest dreams of the summer. But even the cheerfulness was far ahead, and just then—before you came—I really had difficulty sometimes in keeping a cheerful face for Uncle John when he came in. Why—must I tell the whole?"

"Yes, Margaret, every word!"

"I used to go up to Susan D.'s room and cry over her little pinafores and things. As for my pincushion, I fairly soaked it with tears when I first found it. I told you about the pincushion, didn't I? Why, that little lamb, for days before she went, was working away at something, she would not let me see what. After she was gone, I went up to my room for a quiet cry, and there was a gorgeous new pincushion, and 'I love you,' on it in pins. My dear little girl! Well, girls, so—that was the way I felt, and the way I acted, most absurdly; and then—all this happened. First Hugh dropped from the skies; and then Uncle proposed the house party, and you came, Jean, and the Merryweathers; and then you, Peggy; and we discovered our dear Grace; and so, instead of a quiet, rather humdrum summer, I am having the most enchanting, Arabian-nights kind of time that ever was. And how do you think I feel?"

"Phil would say 'like thirty cents!'" said Jean, who was certainly a little inclined to be pert.

"If I hear you say anything of the kind, young one, I'll swat—"

"Peggy, dearest!" murmured Margaret, softly.

"I'll speak to you very severely. I am ashamed of you, Kidderminster!"

"Look here, Peggy, I won't stand that!" said Jean. "You promised me, when I first came, that you wouldn't call me that."

"Then don't behave like a kid!" retorted Peggy. "There, that's enough. Yes, Margaret, it has all been perfectly delightful and fairy-like; and then the Mysteries, too, and the hunting, and the Silver Closet, and all. Oh, I am so glad we didn't find out everything that first summer. I suppose Uncle John thought we were too young and silly then; not that you were ever silly, you dear darling thing. But, Margaret, there is one thing wanting to it all, and only you and I know what that is."

Margaret nodded. "Yes," she said, with a little sigh. "We want our Princess, Peggy. Oh, Grace, if you only knew our Rita! How you and she would love each other! Peggy, you said that just at the right moment, for I have her last letter in my pocket, on purpose to read to you, and I am sure the others would like to hear it, too. Would you, girls?"

There seemed no possible doubt on the subject. All the girls gathered about Margaret, sitting on the floor, as they liked best to do. Margaret herself took possession of her favorite low chair, and drawing the letter from her pocket, began to read:

After the reading of the letter, Grace slipped away to return to her patient, and the three cousins sat together, talking in low tones of Rita, and of Grace herself. Jean maintained stoutly that Rita could not be so fascinating as Grace. Peggy and Margaret insisted that, though totally different in quality, neither could outdo the other in amount of charm.

"They are both the kind of girls you would do anything for!" said Peggy; "just anything in the world, no matter how foolish, just because they wanted you to. It isn't a thing you can describe; it just is, and nobody can help it."

"Well, I should think the difference would be in the kind of thing they would ask you to do," said Jean, with wisdom beyond her years. "Grace wouldn't ask you anything foolish, and I should think Cousin Rita might."

"Grace!" exclaimed Peggy; and then checked herself loyally. "Grace wasn't always so wise as she is now, young one!" she said, simply.

"Well, she's a dear, anyhow; I think Mrs. Peyton might have let her stay all night. It's horribly poky, with Uncle John and the boys and everybody away. Why, Margaret, there isn't a single man about the place, is there? Bannan drove them over, and then he was going to the cattle-show, and so was Michael. Suppose there should be robbers, or anything!"

"Suppose there should!" said Peggy, coolly. "If Frances and I and the dogs could not arrange matters with a robber, it would be a pity. Margaret—what is this queer light? Has everything turned red, all of a sudden?"

"The moon rises late to-night," said Margaret."I have no idea what time it is now. It seems an hour since Grace went."

"The moon isn't red, anyhow!" said Peggy. "I believe—"

As she spoke, she rose and went to the window. "Girls!" she cried. "There is a fire somewhere near. Come and look!"

Margaret and Jean pressed hastily forward to the window. It was a strange scene on which they looked. All of a sudden, the world seemed turned to red and black. A crimson light suffused the sky; against it the trees stood black as ebony. Even as they looked, a crest of flame sprang up above the tree-tops, wavered, and broke into a shower of sparks; at the same instant their nostrils were filled with the acrid, pungent smell of wood smoke.

"Oh, what is it? Where can it be?" cried Margaret.

"Maybe it's only a bonfire!" said Jean.

Peggy shook her head. "Too big for a bonfire!" she said. "I'll go out and see, Margaret. What a pity the boys should miss it! I'll come back and let you know—mercy! what's this?"

The door opened, and a tall, slender figure half ran, half tottered into the room. "Margaret!" cried a wild voice of terror. "Margaret Montfort, save me!"

"Good heavens! Mrs. Peyton!"

"Yes, Emily Peyton. My house is burning. I ran all the way here. I—"

Margaret and Peggy caught her as she fell forward, and laid her on the sofa, and while Jean ran for water and Elizabeth, chafed her hands and her temples, looking the while anxiously at each other.

"Can you tell us what happened?" asked Margaret, trying to keep her voice quiet and even, for Mrs. Peyton was in the wildest agitation. "You escaped, thank Heaven! but—is the fire serious? Who is there now? Where is Grace Wolfe?"

"Don't leave me!" said the sick woman, with a ghastly look. "Margaret, if you leave me I shall die. She—she went back for the jewels. She is in the house now."