“I want you to go back to America with me and be educated, child,” said the kind little lady, “and after a few years, you may return to Japan and teach the women here how to be independent.”

Onoye had joyfully and gratefully consented to this arrangement, providing she might act as Miss Campbell’s maid in the meantime.

O’Haru had made an heroic effort to be glad, also.  She would continue to be the Spears’ housekeeper, she said, and wait for her daughter to return to Japan with “muchly honorable learning.”

During the hot weeks when Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids were sojourning in the mountains, old “great grandmama Nedda” had also passed into another sphere.  Her ending was peaceful, they said; she had slipped quietly away one day at sunset.  The faithful servants buried the gentle creature in the garden not far from the shrine of the Compassionate God.  When the girls returned they set up a little wooden monument in her memory on which Mary printed in India ink the following inscription: 

“NEDDA”

Died August 27, 19—­

Aged 21.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
  And cometh from afar.”

“Here comes someone,” announced Billie, peering from the window of the drawing-room.  “It’s Mr. Buxton, I think, and he’s heavily laden with parcels, apparently.”

In another moment, the bachelor himself stood in the doorway regarding the charming picture with his half-humorous, half-grave expression.

“There were only three Graces, were there not?” he asked.  “I’ve forgotten.  It’s been so long since I met them.  But there should have been four.”

“And why not five, since you are adding to the number,” asked Mary.

“Meaning for the fifth the beauteous lady who lingers in her room?” he demanded.

“She out-graces us all,” exclaimed Billie.  “But what did you bring with you?  Do tell us.  We are dying of curiosity.”

The bachelor’s lips twitched with a crafty smile and he shook one finger at them like the sly old comedian he was.

“Walt!” he said, disappearing into the hall and reappearing in a moment with an aged, gnarled dwarf apple tree growing in a green vase, and a lacquered box beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

“Do you think I have the ghost of a chance?” he asked them in a whisper.

The girls were consumed with giggles.

“Not the ghost,” laughed Billie.  “She wouldn’t stay in Japan, not if you brought her all the Emperor’s chrysanthemums in a single bunch.”

“But what’s in the box, Mr. Buxton?” demanded Nancy.

“You shall see,” he answered.  “Wait until the Fifth Grace appears.”

“Here she is,” they cried in a chorus, as Miss Campbell swept into the room, resplendent in mauve satin covered with billows of fine lace.