“Indeed, you’re very much mistaken, Colonel—­that is, Mr.—­Pinckney, as far as I am concerned.  Mrs. Pinckney is really very kind to me.  I am exceedingly fond of her, but I cannot bear to see things going wrong, and when I can I make them right.  Mrs. Pinckney is in delicate health.”

“That’s all nonsense,” he interrupted.  “She spends her time studying her sensations.  If she were poor she’d have something better to do.  I think you are doing wrong morally, Miss Featherstone.  You are encouraging her in idleness and selfishness by taking her duties and bearing them on your young shoulders.—­Now, Harry, come here,” to that small individual, who slowly and unwillingly descended from the governess’s lap:  “leave Miss Featherstone, my young friend, to pour out the coffee and eat her own breakfast.  Adele is with mamma, is she?  Well, Uncle Dick will give Harry his breakfast.”

The cold was intense the following day, yet Miss Featherstone, well muffled up, was on her way to the hall-door, where the sleigh was waiting to take her to the station.

“Forgive me,” exclaimed Colonel Pinckney, who waylaid her, much to her annoyance, “but what are you going to do for the family now?”

“I am going to New York to get a cook,” she replied with a decided air.

“Do you know the state of the thermometer?”

“I don’t care anything about it,” with some obstinacy, tugging at the button of her glove.

“But I do,” he said.  “Now, Miss Featherstone, while I’m here I am master of the house, and if it’s necessary to go to town it’s I that am going—­to use Pat’s vernacular—­and not you.  Give me directions, and I’ll follow them implicitly.”

“So Dick went, did he?” said Mrs. Pinckney.  She was propped up in bed with large pillows:  Miss Featherstone, still in her bonnet, sat by her side.

“Yes:  it was very kind, for I don’t know what would have become of the children all day, poor things! and you sick.”

Mrs. Pinckney glanced searchingly at her.  “Dick is very kind when he pleases, and exceedingly efficient,” returned the invalid:  “I’ve no doubt he’ll bring back a capital cook.”

“I had a great prejudice against Mr. Pinckney,” said Miss Featherstone, slowly smoothing out her gloves, “but I confess it has vanished, there is something so straightforward and manly about him; and he certainly is very kind.”

“He does not flatter you at all?”

“Oh no; and that is one reason I like him.  I detest the gallant, tender manner which many men affect toward women.”

“Doctor Harris, for instance?”

“Well, Doctor Harris, for instance,” returned Miss Featherstone, smiling, and blushing a little.

“Doctor Harris has certainly made love to her, and Dick as certainly hasn’t.  I wonder—­oh, how I wonder!—­whether he was in earnest the other day?” Her large blue eyes were fixed scrutinizingly on the governess, although she thought, not said, these things.  “He thinks you do a great deal too much in the house, and was quite abusive to me about it:  he actually swore when he discovered the amount of your salary.  Now, my dear Miss Featherstone, you may name your own price:  I’ll give you anything you ask, for no amount of money can represent the comfort you are to me.”