“Goodness gracious, Miss Eugenia,” panted Eliot, as she staggered into a chair and settled her cap on her head.  “You a’most scared me out of me five wits, you were that sudden in your movements.  I thought for a bit as you had gone stark mad.  You gave me quite a turn, you did.”

Eugenia laughed.  “I had to let off steam in some way,” she said; “and really, Eliot, you can’t imagine how glad I am.  They’re cousins of papa’s, you know, the Shermans are.  I used to know Lloyd when they lived in New York.  We played together every day, and fussed—­my eyes, how we fussed!  But that was before she could talk plain, and she must be eleven now, for she’s about two years younger than I am.”

Perching herself on the bed among piles of snowy linen, Eugenia clasped her hands around her knees and began to tell all she could remember of the Little Colonel.  Because there was no one else to confide in, she confided in the maid.  Patient old Eliot listened to much family history that did not interest her and which she immediately forgot, and to many girlish rhapsodies over “Cousin Elizabeth,” whom Eugenia declared was the dearest thing that ever drew the breath of life.

As Eugenia talked on, idly rocking herself back and forth on the bed, Eliot sorted the linen with deft fingers, laying some of it away in drawers, sweet with dainty sachets, and putting some aside that needed a stitch or two.  Presently, as she listened, she found herself taking more interest in the country place that Eugenia described than in anything she had heard of since she said good-bye to her dear little cottage home in England.  She began to hope that Mr. Forbes would consent to Eugenia’s accepting the invitation, and expressed that wish to Eugenia.

“Why, of course I am going!” exclaimed Eugenia, in surprise.  “Whether papa wants me to or not!  I shall answer Cousin Elizabeth’s letter this very minute and accept the invitation before he comes home.  Then if he makes a fuss it will be too late, and I can tease him into a good humour.”

Bouncing off the bed, she went back to the sitting-room and sat down at her desk.  When that letter was written, carefully, and in her best style, she dashed off three notes in an almost unreadable scrawl, to Mollie and Fay and Kell, telling them of her invitation and the delight it gave her.  Then she wandered back to the bedroom where Eliot sat mending, and wandered restlessly around the room.

“How slow the time goes,” she exclaimed, pausing in front of the mantel.  “Two hours until papa will be here.  I want to tell him about it, and ask for some more money.  I need an extra allowance for this visit.”

There was a little Dresden clock on the mantel; two cupids holding up a flower basket, from which swung a spray of roses that formed the pendulum.

“Two long hours,” she fumed, scowling at the clock.  “Hurry up, you old slow-poke,” she cried, catching up the fragile little timepiece and shaking it until the pendulum rattled against the cupids’ plump legs.  “I can’t bear to wait for things.”