“And I’ll come and help if I don’t over-sleep,” declared Mrs. Hope; “but this air makes me feel dreadfully as if I should.”

“I sha’n’t call you,” said Clover; “but it will be nice to have you, if you come.”

She stood at her window after Mrs. Hope had gone, for a last look at the peak which glittered sharply in the light of the moon.  The air was like scented wine.  She drew a long breath.

“How lovely it is!” she said to herself, and kissed her hand to the mountain.  “Good-night, you beautiful thing.”

She woke with the first beam of yellow sun, after eight hours of dreamless sleep, with a keen sense of renovation and refreshment.  A great splashing was going on in the opposite wing, and manly voices hushed to suppressed tones were audible.  Then came a sound of boots on the porch; and peeping from behind her curtain, she saw Clarence and his friend striding across the grass in the direction of the stock-huts.  She glanced at her watch.  It was a quarter past five.

“Now is my chance,” she thought; and dressing rapidly, she put on a little cambric jacket, knotted her hair up, tied a handkerchief over it, and hurried into the sitting-room.  Her first act was to throw open all the windows to let out the smell of stale tobacco, her next to hunt for a broom.  She found one at last, hanging on the door of a sort of store-closet, and moving the furniture as noiselessly as she could, she gave the room a rapid but effectual sweeping.

While the dust settled, she stole out to a place on the hillside where the night before she had noticed some mariposa lilies growing, and gathered a large bunch.  Then she proceeded to dust and straighten, sorted out the newspapers, wiped the woodwork with a damp cloth, arranged the disorderly books, and set the breakfast-table.  When all this was done, there was still time to finish her toilet and put her pretty hair in its accustomed coils and waves; so that Clarence and Mr. Templestowe came in to find the fire blazing, the room bright and neat, Mrs. Hope sitting at the table in a pretty violet gingham ready to pour the coffee which Choo Loo had brought in, and Clover, the good fairy of this transformation scene, in a fresh blue muslin, with a ribbon to match in her hair, just setting the mariposas in the middle of the table.  Their lilac-streaked bells nodded from a tall vase of ground glass.

“Oh, I say,” cried Clarence, “this is something like!  Isn’t it scrumptious, Geoff?  The hut never looked like this before.  It’s wonderful what a woman—­no, two women,” with a bow to Mrs. Hope—­“can do toward making things pleasant.  Where did that vase come from, Clover?  We never owned anything so fine as that, I’m sure.”

“It came from my bag; and it’s a present for you and Mr. Templestowe.  I saw it in a shop-window yesterday; and it occurred to me that it might be just the thing for High Valley, and fill a gap.  And Mrs. Hope has brought you each a pretty coffee-cup.”