e place
ready, bidin' the time he might come. But seems like I heard that Eliza
Jane ain't goin' t'-day. She's takin' washin' in fur the boarders an'
makin' money out of it. Eliza Jane'll get top lofty if she finds she
ain't naturally dependent on James B. It don't do fur some women t' know
their wuth."

Janet laughed.

"It helps others!" she answered lightly.

When the dinner dishes were disposed of, Janet took her sunbonnet and
started off for Bluff Head. The day was hot and the road dusty. The
sunbonnet, as a feminine requisite of old Quinton, was desirable; but
Janet swung hers from her arm, thereby satisfying Mrs. Grundy's demands
and not interfering with her own rights. At one o'clock, in the Quinton
of that day, the city boarders were eating _en masse_, and the
Quintonites, in various capacities, were serving them; so the girl on
the highway had the place to herself. The lighthouse rose red and
gleaming from Cap'n David's garden spot; the bay, blue and rippling,
spread in and out of its tiny sub-bays where the land stretched like
five fingers of a hand, with the blue water in between. To the west lay
the Hills in their "artistic desolation," and to the north of them The
Bluff, with Mr. Devant's long-closed house gracing the summit. It
mattered little to Janet whether Eliza Jane Smith was in command of
Bluff Head or not. The past would never have been as sweet as Janet knew
it, had she depended upon Eliza Jane's movements to govern her ingress
and egress to the place.

Going rapidly along, the girl presently came to the grounds of the big
house. Years ago attempts at landscape gardening had been indulged in,
while the master of the place fancied to pass his summers there, but
years of recent neglect had all but obliterated the marks of culture.
Wildness was over all, but it was the wildness of former refinement.

Past the sundial ran the girl, and around to the rear of the house. Then
she burrowed under a dense rosebush and pushed her way through a
basement window, almost hidden by the undergrowth, the sash of which
swung inward at the familiar pressure.

It was but a moment's work to scramble through, and then run up the
dark, disused stairway. The place had a mouldy smell, but it was neat
and orderly, and the weekly airings, given by Eliza Jane, saved it from
dampness. The silence and absence of human nearness might well have
daunted one; but Janet, the only living thing, apparently, in the
deserted hous