After a long wakeful night, spent in very serious thought for every one’s good, not excluding her own—­since there is a certain point beyond which one has no right to forget one’s self, and perpetual martyrs rarely make very pleasant heads of families—­she said to her girls next morning that she thought David Dalziel’s brilliant idea had a great deal of sense in it; St. Andrews was a very nice place, and the cottage there would exactly suit their finances, while the tenure upon which he proposed they should hold it (from term to term) would also fit in with their undecided future; because, as all knew, wherever Helen or Janetta married, each would take her fortune and go, leaving Miss Williams with her little legacy, above want certainly, but not exactly a millionaire.

These and other points she set before them in her practical fashion, just as if her heart did not leap—­sometimes with pleasure, sometimes with pain—­at the very thought of St. Andrews, and as if to see herself sit daily and hourly face to face with her old self, the ghost of her own youth, would be a quite easy thing.

The girls were delighted.  They left all to Auntie, as was their habit to do.  Burdens naturally fall upon the shoulders fitted for them, and which seem even to have a faculty for drawing them down there.  Miss Williams’s new duties had developed in her a whole range of new qualities, dormant during her governess life.  Nobody knew better than she how to manage a house and guide a family.  The girls soon felt that Auntie might have been a mother all her days, she was so thoroughly motherly and they gave up every thing into her hands.

So the whole matter was settled, David rejoicing exceedingly, and considering it “jolly fun,” and quite like a bit out of a play, that his former governess should come back as his tenant, and inhabit the old familiar cottage.

“And I’ll take a run over to see you as soon as the long vacation begins, just to teach the young ladies golfing.  Mr. Roy taught all us boys, you know; and we’ll take that very walk he used to take us, across the Links and along the sands to the Eden.  Wasn’t it the river Eden, Miss Williams?  I am sure I remember it.  I think I am very good at remembering.”

Other people were also “good at remembering.”  During the first few weeks after they settled down at St. Andrews the girls noticed that Auntie became excessively pale, and was sometimes quite “distrait” and bewildered-looking, which was little wonder, considering all she had to do and arrange.  But she got better in time.  The cottage was so sweet, the sea so fresh, the whole place so charming.  Slowly, Miss Williams’s ordinary looks returned—­the “good” looks which her girls so energetically protested she had now, if never before.  They never allowed her to confess herself old by caps or shawls, or any of those pretty temporary hindrances to the march of Time.  She resisted not; she let them dress her as they please, in a reasonable way, for she felt they loved her; and as to her age, why, she knew it, and knew that nothing could alter it, so what did it matter?  She smiled, and tried to look as nice and as young as she could for her girls’ sake.