herself in
order to determine what she was to do.

"Yes, Jack, that's exactly what the poor dear wants; I've been trying
to get a word in to ask her," agreed Mrs. Middleton plaintively. Elsie
rose.

"Where did you decide to put her, Milly? In the blue room?"

"Yes, dear, but I'm not perfectly sure whether Katy got it ready. Do
you mind calling her?"

He fetched the handsome, slatternly maid servant, who drew up the lower
corner of her apron crosswise to disguise its dirt, but openly and
unashamed, and only to uncover a dress underneath that was quite as
untidy.

"Katy, this is our niece, Miss Moss, who has come to live with us,"
Mrs. Middleton announced. "Have you got the blue room ready for her?"

Katy bowed low to Elsie before she replied.

"No'm, not yet," she said.

"Oh, Katy, when I told you to be sure?"

"No'm, you didn't," responded the woman pleasantly.

"Dear me! Well, I meant to; I suppose it slipped my mind."

She turned to Elsie. "I've been particularly wretched all day,
scarcely able, with all my will-power at full strain, to hold up my
head."

"It seems to me," she addressed Kate reproachfully, "you might have
done it anyhow. You knew what Mr. Middleton was going in town for."

"I'll get a place ready for her right now in no time, ma'am," Katy
assured her cheerfully. As she was leaving the room with an admiring
look at Elsie, she glanced suspiciously at Mrs. Middleton, whose hand
was hidden in a fold of her wrapper.

"Is that my story-book you've got, ma'am?" she inquired.

Mrs. Middleton drew forth the book, looked at it as if in great
surprise, and gave it to Kate, who disappeared at once. Mr. Middleton
followed with Elsie's luggage.

Elsie, who did not resume her seat, walked to the window and gazed out,
without, however, seeing anything. Mrs. Middleton began to rhapsodize
over the elms and oaks and some rooks in the distance that were really
crows. But before she had gone far, Katy appeared to say that the room
was ready. If she had not done it in no time, as she had proposed, she
had certainly spent as little time as one could and accomplish
anything. Mrs. Middleton led Elsie up-stairs, threw open the door of
the room with a dramatic gesture, kissed and fondled her, and finally
left her to get a good rest.

Elsie closed the door after her, dropped into a chair and, burying her
face in her hands, sat motionless.

CHAPTER VI

For some time Elsie could not th