castles in the air seemed tumbling about her head at the same time.

They were expecting her mother's cousins over from America. Dorothy had
been chattering about them to the girls at school all the term, and it
was in honour of these very cousins she was having her first Bond Street
costume. Her mother had not said that was the reason, but Dorothy knew
it. She had a _sweet_, really _big_ hat too, with tiny rosebuds, and new
gloves and boots. As a rule her mother was not particular about getting
everything new at the same time, but she had taken enough pains this
time to please Dorothy herself.

"They do dress children so at Boston," Dorothy had overheard her mother
say to Mr. Graham, as a sort of excuse. "I should like Dollie to look
nice."

And from that one sentence Dorothy had conjured up all sorts of things
about these wonderful cousins. Of course she thought they were coming to
stay with them. She expected there would be girls of her own age, and
that they would be so charmed with their English cousin that they would
invite her to go back to Boston with them. She had talked about them,
and thought about them so much that she imagined her mother had _told_
her all this, but really Mrs. Graham, who talked very little, didn't
know much about her cousins herself, so she could not have given her
little daughter all this information if she had been inclined to.

And now it all seemed so _tame_. First no costume, then an ordinary wire
to ask mother to go up for a day's shopping. They might have come from
Surrey instead of America. And two whole days before they wired at all.

Perhaps Mrs. Graham was thinking something of the kind too, for she
stood biting her lip, with the colour going and coming in pretty blushes
on her cheek, as if she could not make up her mind.

She was just "mother" to Dorothy, but to other people Mrs. Graham was
both pretty and sweet.

"I _must_ go," she said at length, "and there is scarcely time to get
ready."

"Oh, _mother_!" cried Dorothy, "can't I come too?"

Mrs. Graham still seemed to be considering something else, and she
merely answered, "No, dear," and went quickly upstairs.

Dorothy sank down on the sofa in a terribly injured mood. Nobody seemed
to be thinking of _her_ at all. And before she had got over the first
brunt of this discovery her mother was back again ready to go, with her
purse-bag and gloves in her hand.

[Sidenote: Left in Charge]

"Dorothy," she said, arrang