“He would write to his employer,” he said; he could not give an answer of himself.

The answer came in five days.  They might relinquish the house at any moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy.  It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily.

Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out.  She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett’s face when he read his agent’s letter and replied to it in those three lines without moving from his seat.

“I might have expected it,” he said to himself.  “She’s a child after all.  But she began so bravely!  And it can’t help being worse by and by.  Well, one can’t live people’s lives for them.”  And he turned back to his other papers,—­his notes of yesterday’s debate in the House.

* * * * *

Early in June, there came lovely days.

Sylvie was very busy.  She had kept her two girls with her to the end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the remainder of their stay.  She had the whole house to go over; even a year’s accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and dispose of everything anew.  She began with the attic; the trunks and the boxes.  She had to give away a great deal that would have been of service had they continued to live quietly on.  Two old proverbs asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying themselves over to her as she worked:  “A rolling stone gathers no moss;” “Three removes are as bad as a fire.”

She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost shelves of her mother’s wardrobe, with little fear of any but village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and names were suddenly announced.

“Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!”

Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have said.  She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry.

“What shall I do?  Give me your hand, Katy!  And where on earth is my other dress?  Can’t you learn to get names right ever, Katy?  Miss Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett.  Say I will be down presently.  O, what hair!”

She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all right.  Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that cloudiness beneath which they shone.

Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them.  For she remembered then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful spring.