came to their table from where she had been
dining alone, and asked in banter: "Well, have you made up your minds to
go over with me?"

Mrs. Lander said bluntly, "We can't ha'dly believe you really want us
to, Mrs. Milray."

"I don't want you? Who put such an idea into your head! Oh, I know!" She
threatened Clementina with the door-key, which she was carrying in her
hand. "It was you, was it? What an artful, suspicious thing! What's got
into you, child? Do you hate me?" She did not give Clementina time to
protest. "Well, now, I can just tell you I do want you, and I'll be
quite heart-broken if you don't come."

"Well, she wrote to her friends this mohning," Mrs. Lander said, "but I
guess she won't git an answa in time for youa steamer, even if they do
let her go."

"Oh, yes she will," Mrs. Milray protested. "It's all right, now; you've
got to go, and there's no use trying to get out of it."

She came to them whenever she could find them in the dining-room, and
she knocked daily at their door till she knew that Clementina had heard
from home. The girl's mother wrote, without a punctuation mark in her
letter, but with a great deal of sense, that such a thing as her going
to Europe could not be settled by telegraph. She did not think it worth
while to report all the facts of a consultation with the rector which
they had held upon getting Clementina's request, and which had renewed
all the original question of her relations with Mrs. Lander in an
intensified form. He had disposed of this upon much the same terms as
before; and they had yielded more readily because the experiment had so
far succeeded. Clementina had apparently no complaint to make of Mrs.
Lander; she was eager to go, and the rector and his wife, who had been
invited to be of the council, were both of the opinion that a course of
European travel would be of the greatest advantage to the girl, if she
wished to fit herself for teaching. It was an opportunity that they
must not think of throwing away. If Mrs. Lander went to Florence, as
it seemed from Clementina's letter she thought of doing, the girl would
pass a delightful winter in study of one of the most interesting cities
in the world, and she would learn things which would enable her to do
better for herself when she came home than she could ever hope to do
otherwise. She might never marry, Mr. Richling suggested, and it was
only right and fair that she should be equipped with as much culture as
pos