The hearer winced a trifle before lightly replying,—­

“Well, I might have sent her forever, and all the result would have been the switch singing about my own shoulders, probably.”

“That is because she knows you would never use it.  As for me,—­Hazel has a good memory.”

Eloise gave a half-imperceptible shiver and frown; but, clearing her brow, said,—­

“If Hazel had my accounts here, they would tame her.  I will put all my malcontents through a course of mathematics.  You do so well everywhere else, Mrs. Arles, that I’ve half the mind to ask you to advise me here.  Little Arlesian, come over into Macedonia!”

“What is the matter?”

“Oh, it’s only an inversion of the old problem, If the ton of coal cost ten dollars, what will the cord of wood come to?  Now, if one bale”—­

“But coal doesn’t cost ten dollars,” replied Mrs. Arles, with admirable simplicity.

“Now, if one bale of Sea-Island”—­

“Oh, my dear, I know nothing at all about it.  Pray, don’t ask me.”

“Well,” said Eloise, after a moment’s wondering pause, in which she had taken time to reflect that Mrs. Arles’s corner of the estate was carried on faultlessly, “it is too bad to vex you with my matters, when you have as much as you can do in the house, yourself,”—­and relapsed into what she called her Pythagorean errors.

“Did you know,” said Mrs. Arles, after a half-hour’s silence, “that Marlboro’ has returned?”

“Marlboro’?” repeated Eloise, hesitatingly.

“Marlboro’ of Blue Bluffs.”

“Oh, yes.  And five’s eleven.  No,” said Eloise, absently and with half a sigh.  “I’ve never seen him, you know,—­he’s been in Kamtschatka and the Moon so long.  How did you know?”

“Hazel told me.  Hazel wants to marry his Vane.”

“His what?”

“Not his weathercock.  Vane, his butler.”

“That is why she behaved so.  Dancing quicksilver.  Then, perhaps, he’ll buy her.  What a relief it would be!”

“Marlboro’ is a master!” said Mrs. Arles, emphatically.

There was a good deal in the ensuing pause.  For Eloise, in her single year, had not half learned the neighborhood’s gossip.

“A cruel man.  Then it’s not to be thought of.  We shall have to buy Vane.  Though how it’s to be done”—­

“I didn’t say he was a cruel man.  He wouldn’t think of interfering with an ordinance of his overseers.  I esteem his thoroughness.  He has ideas.  But I might have said that he is a remarkable man.”

“There’ll be some pulling of caps soon, Hazel said to-day, in her gibberish.  I couldn’t think what she meant.”

“Blue Bluffs is a place to be mistress of.  He’s a woman-hater, though, Mr. Marlboro’,—­believes in no woman capable of resisting him when he flings the handkerchief, should he choose, but believes in none worth choosing.”

“We shall have to invite him here, Mrs. Arles,” said Eloise, mischievously, “and show him that there are two of us.”