“Oh, deary me, Miss, what time have I had for that, I should like to know?”

“Well now, get every thing ready for their breakfast, and pray don’t bang doors or make a great clatter with the china, as you set the table.  Every sound is heard in this small house, and your mistress has had no sleep all night.”

“Well, she’ll be doubly cross to day, then, I’ll be bound.  Howsoever, I shall only stay my month, and it don’t much matter what I do, she never gives a servant a good character, and I don’t expect it.”

“No, and you will not deserve it if you are inattentive and unfeeling now.  It is not doing as you would be done by, either.  Do now, Betsey, forget, for a few days, that Miss Webster ever scolded or found fault with you.  If you want to love any one just do him a kindness, and you don’t know how fast love springs up in the heart; you would be much happier, Betsey, I am sure.  Come try, you are not a cross girl, and you don’t mean to be unkind now.  I shall expect to hear from Lucy, when I come again, how well you have managed together.”

Fred went to Mr. Crosse’s after breakfast, in the pony gig, for aunt Agnes, who, at a summons from Emilie, was quite willing to come and see after Miss Webster’s household.  She soon put mutters into a better train, both in kitchen and parlour, so that the pacified lodgers consented to remain.  And though neither Lucy nor Betsey altogether liked aunt Agnes, they found her quite an improvement on Miss Webster.

It is not our object to follow Miss Webster through her domestic troubles nor through the tedious process of the convalescence of a scalt foot.  We will rather follow Edith into her chamber, and see how she is trying to learn the arts of the Peacemaker there.

Edith’s head is bent over a book, a torn book, and her countenance is flushed and heated.  She is out of breath, too, and her hair is hanging disordered about her pretty face; not pretty now, however; it is an angry face—­and an angry face is never pretty.

Has she been quarrelling with Fred again? yes, even so.  Fred would not give up Hans Andersen’s Tales, which Emilie had just given Edith, and which she was reading busily, when some one came to see her about a new bonnet, so she left the book on the table, and in the mean time Fred came in, snatched it up, and was soon deep in the feats of the “Flying Trunk.”  Then came the little lady back and demanded the book, not very pleasantly, if the truth must be told.  Fred meant to give it up, but he meant to tease his sister first, and Edith, who had no patience to wait, snatched at the book.  Fred of course resisted, and it was not until the book had been nearly parted from its cover, and some damage had ensued to the dress and hair of both parties that Edith regained possession; not peaceable possession, however, for both of the children’s spirits were ruffled.