“It is just you I wanted to find,” cried Leslie, sealing her warm impulse with immediate act.  “Will you be Zorayda, Imogen,—­with Jeannie and Elinor, you know?  I’ve got so much to do without.  Sin Saxon understands; it’s a bit of a secret as yet.  I shall be so obliged!”

Imogen’s blue eyes sparkled and widened.  It was just what she had been secretly longing for.  But why in the world should Leslie Goldthwaite want to give it up?

It had got crowded out, that was all.

Another thing kept coming into Leslie’s head that day,—­the yards of delicate grass-linen that she had hemstitched, and knotted into bands that summer,—­just for idle work, when plain bindings and simple ruffling would have done as well,—­and all for her accumulating treasure of reserved robings, while here were these two girls darning stockings, and sewing over heavy woollen stuffs, that actual, inevitable work might be dispatched in these bright, warm hours that had been meant for holiday.  It troubled her to think of it, seeing that the time was gone, and nothing now but these threads and holes remained of it to her share.

Martha Josselyn had asked her yesterday about the stitch,—­some little baby-daintiness she had thought of for the mother who couldn’t afford embroideries and thread-laces for her youngest and least of so many.  Leslie would go and show her, and, as Miss Craydocke said, get intimate.  It was true there were certain little things one could not do, except as a friend.

Meanwhile, Martha Josselyn must be the Sister of Charity in that lovely tableau of Consolation.

It does not take long for two young girls to grow intimate over tableau plans and fancy stitches.  Two days after this, Leslie Goldthwaite was as cosily established in the Josselyns’ room as if she had been there every day all summer.  Some people are like drops of quicksilver, as Martha Josselyn had declared, only one can’t tell how that is till one gets out of the bottle.

“Thank you,” she said to Leslie, as she mastered the little intricacy of the work upon the experimental scrap of cambric she had drawn.  “I understand it now, I think, and I shall find time, somehow, after I get home, for what I want to do.”  With that, she laid it in a corner of her basket, and took up cotton-flannel again.

Leslie put something, twisted lightly in soft paper, beside it.  “I want you to keep that, please, for a pattern, and to remember me,” she said.  “I’ve made yards more than I really want.  It’s nothing,” she added, hastily interrupting the surprised and remonstrating thanks of the other.  “And now we must see about that scapulary thing, or whatever it is, for your nun’s dress.”

And there was no more about it, only an unusual feeling in Martha Josselyn’s heart, that came up warm long after, and by and by a little difference among Leslie Goldthwaite’s pretty garnishings, where something had got crowded out.