“You know you would never have dreamed of doing such a thing.  Are you going away now?”

“In a moment.  If you get into trouble, or need anything, will you write to me?  Remember, I am your mother’s friend.”

“Is not Mr. Hargrove also?”

“Certainly.”

He took her hands, and bending down looked kindly into the delicate lovely face.

“Good-bye, Regina.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Palma.”

“I hope, little girl, that we shall always be friends.”

“You are very good to wish it.  Thank you for taking care of me.  Because you are my mother’s best friend, I shall pray for you every night.”

His sternly moulded lips twitched with some strange passing reminiscence of earlier years, but the emotion vanished, and, pressing her hands gently, he turned and went down the walk leading to the gate.

CHAPTER V.

“Please let me come in, and help you.”

Regina knocked timidly at the door of the parsonage guest’s chamber, and Mrs. Lindsay answered from within: 

“Come in?  Of course you may, but what help do you imagine you can render, you useless piece of prettiness?  Shall I set you on the mantlepiece between the china kittens, and the glass lambs, right under the sharp nose of my grandmother’s portrait, where her great solemn eyes will keep you in order?  Whence do all those delectable odours come?  Are you a walking sachet?”

She was kneeling before an open drawer of the bureau, methodically arranging sundry garments, and, pausing in the task, looked over her shoulder at the girl who stood near, holding her hands behind her.

“I am sure I could help you, if I were only allowed to try.  I am quite a large girl now, more than a year older than when I came here, and Hannah has taught me to do ever so many things.  She says I will be a famous cook some day.  You didn’t know that I made up the Sally Lunn for tea?”

“What an ambitious bit of majesty you are!  You wish to reign in the kitchen, rule in the poultry yard, and now presume to invade my province—­my special kingdom of making things ready for the Bishop?  Have you been anointing yourself with a whole vial of Lubin’s extract of—­Ah!—­delicious—­what is it?”

“Whatever it may be, will you let me fix it to suit myself on the Bishop’s bureau?”

“No, you impertinent, wily Delilah in short clothes!  I never promise in the dark; show it to me first, and then perhaps I may negotiate with you.  You know as well as I do that the Bishop dearly loves perfumes, and if I should generously concede you the privilege of presenting ‘sweet-smelling savours’ unto him you might some day depose me—­and I wish you distinctly to understand that I intend to reign over him as long as I live; not an inch of territory shall you filch.”

Regina held up her hands, displaying in one several feathery sprays of Belgian honeysuckle, with half of its petals pearl, half of the palest pink; in the other a bunch of double violets of the rarest shade of delicate lilac, so unusual in the floral kingdom.