gate, engaged in reflection, she espied a small cabin not far away,

and walked toward it on a tour of investigation. It proved to have
three tiny rooms--a bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen. The rent

was only two pounds a month, it is true, but it was in all respects
the most unattractive, poverty-stricken, undesirabledwelling I ever

saw. It was the small stove in the kitchen that kindled Francesca's
imagination, and she made up her mind instantly to become a

householder on her own account. I tried to dissuade her; but she is
as firm as the Rock of Cashel when once she has set her heart upon

anything.
"I shall be almost your next-door neighbour, Penelope," she coaxed,

"and of course you will give me Benella. She will sleep in the
sitting-room, and I will do the cooking. The landlady says there is

no trouble about food. 'What to ate?' she inquired, leaning out
sociably over the half-door. 'Sure it'll drive up to your very

doore just.' And here is the 'wee grass,' as she calls it, where
'yous can take your tay' under the Japanese umbrella left by the

last tenant. Think how unusual it will be for us to live in three
different houses for a week; and 'there's luck in odd numbers, says

Rory O'More.' We shall have the advantages of good society, too,
when we are living apart, for I foreseeentertainment after

entertainment. We will give breakfasts, luncheons, teas, and
dinners to one another; and meanwhile I shall have learned all the

housewifely arts. Think, too, how much better you can paint with me
out of your way!"

"Does no thought of your eccentricity blight your young spirit,
dear?"

"Why should it when I have simply shaped my course by yours?"
"But I am married, my child."

"And I'm 'going to be married, aha, Mamma!' as the song says; and
what about Salemina, you haven't scolded her?"

"She is living her very last days of single blessedness," I
rejoined; "she does not know it, but she is; and I want to give her

all the freedom possible. Very well, dear innocent, live in your
wee hut, then, if you can persuade Benella to stay with you; but I

think there would best be no public visiting between you and those
who live in Rosaleen Cottage and the Old Hall, as it might ruin

their social position."
Benella confessed that she had not the heart to refuse Francesca

anything. "She's too handsome," she said, "and too winnin'. I
s'pose she'll cook up some dreadful messes, but I'm willin' to eat

'em, to oblige her, and perhaps it'll save her husband a few spells
of dyspepsy at the start; though, as far as my experience goes,

ministers'll always eat anything that's set before 'em, and look
over their shoulders for more."

We had a heavenly week of silliness, and by dint of concealing our
real relations from the general public, I fancy we escaped harsh

criticism. There is a very large percentage of lunacy anyway in
Ireland, as well as great leniency of public opinion, and I fancy

there is scarcely a country on the map in which one could be more
foolish without being found out. Visit each other we did

constantly, and candourobliges me to state that, though each of us
secretly prided herself on the perfection of her cuisine, Miss

Monroe gave the most successful afternoon tea of all, on the 'wee
grass,' under the Japanese umbrella. How unexpectedly" target="_blank" title="ad.意外地；突然地">unexpectedly good were her

scones, her tea-cakes, and her cress sandwiches, and how pretty and
graceful and womanly she was, all flushed with pride at our envy and

approbation! I did a water-colour sketch of her and sent it to
Ronald, receiving in return a letter bubbling over with fond

admiration and gratitude. She seems always in tone with the season
and the landscape, does Francesca, and she arrives at it

unconsciously, too. She glances out of her window at the yellow
laburnum-tree when she is putting on her white frock, and it

suggests to her all her amber trinkets and her drooping hat with the
wreath of buttercups. When she came to my hawthornluncheon at

Rosaleen Cottage she did not make the mistake of heaping pink on
pink, but wore a cotton gown of palest green, with a bunch of rosy

blossoms at her belt. I painted her just as she stood under the
hawthorn, with its fluttering petals and singing birds, calling the

picture Grainne Mael*: A Vision of Erinn, writing under it the
verse:-

'The thrushes seen in bushes green are singing loud-
Bid sadness go and gladness glow,--give welcome proud!

The Rover comes, the Lover, whom you long bewail,
O'er sunny seas, with honey breeze, to Grainne Mael.'

* Pronounced Graunia Wael, the M being modified. It is one of the
endearing names given to Ireland in the Penal Times.

Benella, I fancy, never had so varied a week in her life, and she
was in her element. We were obliged to hire a side-car by the day,

as two of our residences were over a mile apart; and the driver of
that vehicle was the only person, I think, who had any suspicion of

our sanity. In the intervals of teaching Francesca cooking, and
eating the results while the cook herself prudently lunched or dined

with her friends, Benella 'spring-cleaned' the lodge at the Old
Hall, scrubbed the gateposts, mended stone walls, weeded garden

beds, made bags for the brooms and dusters and mattresses, burned
coffee and camphor and other ill-smelling things in all the rooms,

and devotedconsiderable time to superintending my little maid, that
I might not feel neglected. We were naturally obliged, meanwhile,

to wait upon ourselves and keep our frocks in order; but as long as
the Derelict was so busy and happy, and so devoted to the universal

good, it would have been churlish and ungrateful to complain.
On leaving the Wee Hut, as Francesca had, with ostentatious modesty,

named her residence, she paid her landlady two pounds, and was
discomfited when the exuberant and impetuous woman embraced her in a

paroxysm of weepinggratitude.
"I cannot understand, Penelope, why she was so disproportionately

grateful, for I only gave her five shillings over the two pounds
rent."

"Yes, dear," I responded drily; "but you remember that the rent was
for the month, and you paid her two pounds five shillings for the

week."
All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought

footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing
my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and

offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for
that surgical operation should ever come. Finally, just as we were

about to separate for the night, she said, with insinuating
sweetness, "You won't tell Ronald about my mistake with the rent-

money, will you, dearest and darlingest girls?"
We are now quite ready to join in all the gaieties that may ensue

when Rosnaree welcomes its master and his guests. Our page in
buttons at the lodge gives Benella full scope for her administrative

ability, which seems to have sprung into being since she entered our
service; at least, if I except that evidence of it which she

displayed in managing us when first we met. She calls our page 'the
Button Boy,' and makes his life a burden to him by taking him away

from his easy duties at the gate, covering his livery with baggy
overalls, and setting him to weed the garden. It can never, in the

nature of things, be made free from weeds during our brief term of
tenancy, but Benella cleverly keeps her slave at work on the beds

and the walks that are the most conspicuous to visitors. The Old
Hall used simply to be called 'Aunt David's house' by the Welsh

Joyces, and it was Aunt David herself who made the garden; she who
traced the lines of the flower-beds with the ivory tip of her

parasol; she who planned the quaint stone gateways and arbours and
hedge seats; she who devised the interminable stretches of paths,

the labyrinthine walks, the mazes, and the hidden flower-plots. You
walk on and on between high hedges, until, if you have not missed

your way, you presently find a little pansy or rose or lily garden.
It is quite the most unexpected and piquant method of laying out a

place I have ever seen; and the only difficulty about it is that any
gardener, unless he were possessed of unusual sense of direction,