She was still insisting on her right to keep me, when a slight sound caused us both to turn, and meeting Georgia’s anxious, listening gaze, grandma appealed to her, saying,

“Thou hast heard thy sister’s talk, but thou hast not been in this fuss, and surely wilt not leave me?”

“Yes, I am going with Eliza,” was the prompt answer, which had no sooner left her lips, than grandma resorted to her last expedient:  she ordered us both to our room, and forbade us to leave it until she should hear from grandpa.

What message she sent him by the milker we never learned.  Georgia, being already dressed for the journey, and her trunk containing most of her possessions being at Mrs. Bergwald’s, had nothing to do but await results.

I quickly changed my working suit for a better one, which had been given me by a German friend from San Francisco.  Then I laid out my treasured keepsakes.  In my nervous energy, nothing was forgotten.  I took pains that my clothes against the wall should hang in straight rows, that the folded ones should lie in neat piles in my pretty Chinese trunk, and that the bunch of artificial flowers which I had always kept for a top centre mark, should be exactly in the middle; finally, that the gray gauze veil used as a fancy covering of the whole should be smoothly tucked in around the clothing.  This done, I gave a parting glance at the dainty effect, dropped the cover, snapped the queer little brass padlock in place, put the key on the table, and covered the trunk so that its embossed figures of birds and flowers should be protected from harm.

We had not remembered to tell Elitha about the hundred dollars which Jakie had willed us, so decided to let grandma keep it to cover some of the expense we had been to her, also not to ask for our little trinkets stored in her closet.

With the bundle containing my keepsakes, I now sat down by Georgia and listened with bated breath to the sound of grandma’s approaching footsteps.  She entered and hastily began,

“Grandpa says, if you want to go, and your people are here to take you, we have no right to keep you; but that I am not to part with you bad friends.  So I came to shake hands and say good-bye.  But I don’t forgive you for going away, and I never want to see you or hear from you again!”

She did not ask to see what we were taking away, nor did her good-bye seem like parting.

The fear that something might yet arise to prevent our reaching brother and sister impelled us to run the greater part of the distance to the hotel, and in less than an hour thereafter, we were in the carriage with them on the way to Mrs. Bergwald’s, prior to taking the road to Sacramento.

Off at last, without a soul in the town knowing it!

Georgia, who had neither said nor done anything to anger grandma, was easier in mind and more comfortable in body, than I, who, fasting, had borne the trials of the morning.  I could conceal the cause, but not the faint and ill feeling which oppressed me during the morning drive and continued until I had had something to eat at the wayside inn, and a rest, while the horses were enjoying their nooning.