ladies to accompany her. She still wore her hair
down her back, and her dresses did not quite touch the tops of her boots,
and it was therefore necessary to be careful in regard to her
prerogatives as mistress of the house.

Early one afternoon, much sooner than there was reason to expect
visitors, a carriage came in at the Cobhurst gate, driven by our friend
Andy Griffing. Miriam happened to be at a front window, and regarded
with some surprise the shabby equipage. It came with a flourish to the
front of the house, and stopped. But instead of alighting, its occupant
seemed to be expostulating with the driver. Andy shook his head a great
deal, but finally drove round at the back, when an elderly woman got
out, and came to the hall door. Miriam, who supposed, of course, that
she would be wanted, was there to meet her, and there was no necessity
for ringing or knocking.

"My name," said the visitor, "is La Fleur, if you please. I came to see
Mrs. Drane and Miss Drane, if you please. Thank you very much, I will
come in. I will wait here, or, if you will be so good as to tell me where
I can find Mrs. Drane, I will go to her. I used to live with her: I was
her cook."

Miriam had been gazing with much interest on the puffy face and
shawl-enwrapped body of the old woman who addressed her with a smiling
obsequiousness to which she was not at all accustomed.

The thought struck her that with servants like this woman, it would be
easy to feel herself a mistress. She had heard from the Dranes a great
deal about their famous cook, and she was glad of the opportunity to look
upon this learned professor of kitchen lore.

"What would she have said to my tall raspberry tarts?" involuntarily
thought the girl.

But it was when La Fleur had gone to Mrs. Drane's room, and Cicely,
wildly delighted when informed who had come to see them, had run to meet
the dear old woman, that Miriam pondered most seriously upon this visit
from a cook. She had not known anything of the ties between families and
old family servants. At school, servants had been no more than machines;
she was nothing to them, and they were nothing to her; and now she felt
that the ignorance of these ties was one of the deprivations of her life.
That old woman upstairs had not lived very long with the Dranes, and yet
she regarded them with a positive affection. Miriam knew this from what
she had heard. If they were in trouble, and needed her, she would come to
them and