rous whizzing. There's no such thing as actual experience for these
imps of the vivid nerves. And when she came down I looked at her, and
asked her how she liked the singing. Her conduct now leads me to believe
that she has no desire to hear the tune again."

The hearer winced a trifle before lightly replying,--

"Well, _I_ might have sent her forever, and all the result would have
been the switch singing about my own shoulders, probably."

"That is because she knows you would never use it. As for me,--Hazel has
a good memory."

Eloise gave a half-imperceptible shiver and frown; but, clearing her
brow, said,--

"If Hazel had my accounts here, they would tame her. I will put all my
malcontents through a course of mathematics. You do so well everywhere
else, Mrs. Arles, that I've half the mind to ask you to advise me here.
Little Arlesian, come over into Macedonia!"

"What is the matter?"

"Oh, it's only an inversion of the old problem, If the ton of coal cost
ten dollars, what will the cord of wood come to? Now, if one bale"--

"But coal doesn't cost ten dollars," replied Mrs. Arles, with admirable
simplicity.

"Now, if one bale of Sea-Island"--

"Oh, my dear, I know nothing at all about it. Pray, don't ask me."

"Well," said Eloise, after a moment's wondering pause, in which she had
taken time to reflect that Mrs. Arles's corner of the estate was carried
on faultlessly, "it is too bad to vex you with my matters, when you have
as much as you can do in the house, yourself,"--and relapsed into what
she called her Pythagorean errors.

"Did you know," said Mrs. Arles, after a half-hour's silence, "that
Marlboro' has returned?"

"Marlboro'?" repeated Eloise, hesitatingly.

"Marlboro' of Blue Bluffs."

"Oh, yes. And five's eleven. No," said Eloise, absently and with half a
sigh. "I've never seen him, you know,--he's been in Kamtschatka and the
Moon so long. How did you know?"

"Hazel told me. Hazel wants to marry his Vane."

"His what?"

"Not his weathercock. Vane, his butler."

"That is why she behaved so. Dancing quicksilver. Then, perhaps, he'll
buy her. What a relief it would be!"

"Marlboro' is a master!" said Mrs. Arles, emphatically.

There was a good deal in the ensuing pause. For Eloise, in her single
year, had not half learned the neighborhood's gossip.

"A cruel man. Then it's not to be thought of. We shall have to buy Vane.
Though how it's to be done"--

"I didn't say he was a cruel ma