That evening Mrs. Milray came to their table from where she had been
dining alone, and asked in banter: "Well, have you made up your minds to
go over with me?"

Mrs. Lander said bluntly, "We can't ha'dly believe you really want us to,
Mrs. Milray."

"I don't want you? Who put such an idea into your head! Oh, I know!" She
threatened Clementina with the door-key, which she was carrying in her
hand. "It was you, was it? What an artful, suspicious thing! What's got
into you, child? Do you hate me?" She did not give Clementina time to
protest. "Well, now, I can just tell you I do want you, and I'll be quite
heart-broken if you don't come."

"Well, she wrote to her friends this mohning," Mrs. Lander said, "but I
guess she won't git an answa in time for youa steamer, even if they do
let her go."

"Oh, yes she will," Mrs. Milray protested. "It's all right, now; you've
got to go, and there's no use trying to get out of it."

She came to them whenever she could find them in the dining-room, and she
knocked daily at their door till she knew that Clementina had heard from
home. The girl's mother wrote, without a punctuation mark in her letter,
but with a great deal of sense, that such a thing as her going to Europe
could not be settled by telegraph. She did not think it worth while to
report all the facts of a consultation with the rector which they had
held upon getting Clementina's request, and which had renewed all the
original question of her relations with Mrs. Lander in an intensified
form. He had disposed of this upon much the same terms as before; and