next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late
for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let
me go.

Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing
Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my
composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately
silence with my little bird-like head in the air.

I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a
shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"

"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.

"And why not?"

"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because you
think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Convent
that you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . as bad as the
bad women in the Bible!"

"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I could
see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did not
trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan,
who was sitting inside, said:

"My little Mary won't leave home like that--without kissing her aunt and
saying good-bye to her cousins."

So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, and
lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.

"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I had
passed her my quick little ear caught the words:

"Good thing she's going, though."

During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like
hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel and
saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled me
into the carriage and banged the door on me.

But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his little
eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief,
said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.

There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her open
window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees and
I lost the sight of her.

What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do not
know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage.
I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that it
did not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with a
dog darted from un