's to go back to Anchor and Hope
Alley?"

"I'm quite agreeable to it, Miss Nancy, if it suits the mistress," said
Betty meekly. So the thing was settled at once. Kettles, out of Anchor
and Hope Alley, had become Keturah, Miss Unity's maid in the Close.

"She looks very nice now she's Keturah," said Nancy, as the little girls
drove away, "but she isn't funny any more. There was something I always
liked about Kettles."

And Kettles she always remained to the children at Easney, though the
name was never heard at Nearminster.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE HOME-COMING.

"I don't believe I ever was so glad of anything in all my life," said
Nancy.

She was sitting with Pennie in a favourite place of theirs, a broad
window-seat at the end of a passage which looked out on the garden. It
was a snug private sort of corner, and when they had any particular bit
of work, or any matter they wished to talk over without the boys, it was
always their habit to retire there. This morning something very special
had happened. A letter from mother to Miss Grey, inclosing one for the
children, to say that they were all coming back on Monday. To-day was
Saturday. Only one more day and two more nights before mother and
father, Dickie, baby, and nurse, would be in their right places, and the
house would feel natural again.

The boys, after hearing the news, had at once rushed upstairs to the
museum and had not been seen since, though, as Nancy said, there was
nothing more they could possibly do to it, unless they made it untidy
for the pleasure of putting it straight. For the museum was now in very
fine order, with all its shelves full, and all its specimens neatly
labelled and arranged. The doctor himself had climbed the steep
staircase to pay a visit to it, and squeezed himself with difficulty
through the low doorway. True, there was only one corner in it where he
could stand upright, because the roof sloped so much and he was so tall;
but if it had been a palace he could not have admired it more, or looked
more really pleased with everything in it.

The boys, therefore, were quite satisfied; there could not be a better
thing to celebrate the return than to open the museum. But Pennie and
Nancy were quite outside all this, and they had a strong feeling that
they too would like to do something remarkable on Monday. Only what
should it be?

"It's of no use at all to keep on saying you're glad," said Pennie. "Of
course we'