Sextoness Jane came every week now to help with the ironing, which meant greater freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and also, to Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty of a day’s outing every week.  To Sextoness Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were little short of a dissipation.  Miranda, unbending in the face of such sincere and humble admiration, was truly gracious.  The glimpses the little bent, old sextoness got of the young folks, the sense of life going on about her, were as good as a play, to quote her own simile, confided of an evening to Tobias, her great black cat, the only other inmate of the old cottage.

“I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather surprised,” Pauline said one evening, “if he could know all the queer sorts of ways in which we use his money.  But the little easings-up do count for so much.”

“Indeed they do,” Hilary agreed warmly, “though it hasn’t all gone for easings-ups, as you call them, either.”  She had sat down right in the middle of getting ready for bed, to revel in her ribbon box; she so loved pretty ribbons!

The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and herself, held frequent meetings.  “And there’s always one thing,” the girl would declare proudly, “the treasury is never entirely empty.”

She kept faithful account of all money received and spent; each month a certain amount was laid away for the “rainy day”—­which meant, really, the time when the checks should cease to come—–­“for, you know, Uncle Paul only promised them for the summer,” Pauline reminded the others, and herself, rather frequently.  Nor was all of the remainder ever quite used up before the coming of the next check.

“You’re quite a business woman, my dear,” Mr. Shaw said once, smiling over the carefully recorded entries in the little account-book she showed him.  “We must have named you rightly.”

She wrote regularly to her uncle; her letters unconsciously growing more friendly and informal from week to week.  They were bright, vivid letters, more so than Pauline had any idea of.  Through them, Mr. Paul Shaw felt himself becoming very well acquainted with these young relatives whom he had never seen, and in whom, as the weeks went by, he felt himself growing more and more interested.

Without realizing it, he got into the habit of looking forward to that weekly letter; the girl wrote a nice clear hand, there didn’t seem to be any nonsense about her, and she had a way of going right to her point that was most satisfactory.  It seemed sometimes as if he could see the old white parsonage and ivy-covered church; the broad tree-shaded lawns; the outdoor parlor, with the young people gathered about the tea-table; Bedelia, picking her way along the quiet country roads; the great lake in all its moods; the manor house.