“I suppose I’m an ungrateful person, but I truly don’t want to do it, Len.  Of course you know I wouldn’t persist in a course that I thought would do Granny harm, but I don’t see how this can.  She stays in bed in the morning, as warm as toast, until I bring her down here, and I don’t bring her until the room is thoroughly warm.  I give her her breakfast here, and keep her perfectly comfortable all day, as she can tell you.  At night I take her up to a nest as cosy as a kitten’s, and she has her hot milk the last thing to send her off.  Not a breath of discomfort touches her beloved head.”

The two looked at each other, Charlotte’s expression proudly sweet, Ellen’s charmingly beseeching.

“I can see it’s of no use,” admitted Mrs. Burns, disappointedly, “but I’m very sorry.  Will you promise me this?  If at any time it seems to you that my plan is, after all, a better one for you than your own, you’ll be good and come straight over?”

“I promise you that I’ll take proper care of both of us, and love you for a devoted friend.  That ought to satisfy you.  Do you know that as you sit there, with that furry hat on your head and your cheeks glowing, you’re the prettiest thing north of Mason-and-Dixon’s line?”

“I know you’re a flatterer, as you always were.  If I can rival you in that blue cotton—­Charlotte, do you think you ought to wear cotton in December?”

“You wear gauze and low-cut gowns in the evening in January, don’t you?—­and would in Labrador, if you went out to dinner.  What’s the difference between silver tissue in the evening and blue cotton in the morning?”

“Considerable difference, as you very well know.  But you’re impossible to argue with this morning, and I must run back to my packing.  Red won’t hear of my taking more than a certain quite inadequate amount of luggage, and I have to plan pretty closely accordingly.”

“That’s good for you.  You don’t know the first thing about curtailing your desires, and he means to teach you.  Perhaps he won’t limit you as to how much you bring home.”

“I hope not.  We shall stop for a week in Paris before we sail, and I mean to bring you the loveliest evening frock you’ve had in a long time.  It’s no use forbidding me, for I shall do it just the same.”

“I’m not going to forbid you,” laughed Charlotte Ruston, with her cheek against the furry hat.  “I know when not to forbid people to do things I want them to do.  Only make it blue, my blue, and have a touch of silver on it, and I’ll wear it and think of you with adoration.”

“It’s a bargain,” and Ellen went away smiling, with the image of Charlotte in the sort of blue-and-silver gown she meant to bring her, effacing for the moment the other image of Charlotte in a blue cotton house-dress on a freezing winter morning, in a chilly house.