keep her fences in order, to attend to the sick, to rule her household
and her spirit, to dispose of her harvest, and to bring either end of
the thread out of the tangled skein of her affairs.

Perhaps there could have been really no better thing for Eloise than the
diversion from her sorrow which all this perplexity necessarily in some
degree occasioned.

As for Mrs. Arles, so soon as Eloise had begun to move about again, she
had taken herself off on a long-promised visit to the West, and was but
just returning with the October weather.

Eloise, worn and thin, and looking nearly forty, as she had remarked to
herself that morning in the brief moment she could snatch for her
toilet, welcomed the cool and quiet little Mrs. Arles, who might _be_
forty, but looked any age between twenty and thirty, with affectionate
warmth, and made all the world bestir themselves for her comfort. It is
only justice to the owner of the little Andalusian foot to say that in
her specific domain things immediately changed for the better. But that
was merely within-doors, and because she tightened the reins and used
the whip in a manner which Eloise could not have done, if the whole
equipage tumbled to pieces about her ears.

Mrs. Arles had been at home a week or so; the evening was chilly with
rain, and a little fire flickered on the hearth. Mrs. Arles sat on one
side of the hearth, with her tatting in hand; Eloise bent above the
papers scattered over a small table.

"See what it is to go away!" said Eloise, cheerily. "It's like light in
a painting, as the Sisters used to say,--brings out all the shadows."

"Nobody knew how indispensable I was," said the other lady, with the
fragment of expression in the phantom of a smile.

"How pleasant it is to be missed! I _did_ miss you so,--it seemed as if
one of the four sides of the walls were gone. Now we stand--what is that
word of Aristotle's?--four-square again. Now our universe is on wheels.
Just tell me how you tamed Hazel so. She has conducted like a little
wild gorilla all summer,--and here, in the twinkling of an eye, she goes
about soberly, like a baptized Christian. How?"

"By a process of induction."

"You don't mean"--

"Oh, no. Nothing of the kind. I didn't touch her. I sent her into my
room, and told her to take down that little riding-switch hanging over
the mantel"--

"What,--the ebony and gold?"

"Yes. And to whip all the flies out of the air with it. It makes a
monst