She seemed to know what she was about.  Eloise was in good hands, and the two water-soaked young men were about to leave when she said, “I guess one of you will have to carry her to her chamber.  I can’t trust Tim, he’s such a blunderhead.”

“No, no!  Oh, no!  I can walk somehow,” Eloise said, starting to her feet, and sinking back as quickly.

“Let me.  I’ll carry her!” Howard and Jack both exclaimed; but something in Eloise’s eyes gave the preference to Jack, who lifted her as easily as if she had been a child, and carried her up the narrow stairs to the room which at intervals had been occupied by one teacher after another for nearly twenty years, for it was understood that Mrs. Biggs was to board the teachers who had no home of their own in the district.

But never had so forlorn or wretched an one been there as poor Eloise.  The world certainly looked very dreary to her, and her lip quivered as she said good-by to Jack, and tried to smile in reply to his assurance that she would be better soon, and that he would call and see her on the morrow.  Then he was gone, and Eloise heard the footsteps and voices of the three men as they left the house and hurried away.  She was soon in bed, and as comfortable as Mrs. Biggs could make her.  That good lady was a born nurse as well as a gossip, and as she arranged Eloise for what there was left of the night, her tongue ran incessantly, first on her own sprain,—­every harrowing detail of which was gone over,—­then on the two young men, Howard Crompton and t’other one, who was he?  She knew Mr. Howard,—­everybody did.  He was Col.  Crompton’s nephew, and he ruled the roost at the Crompton House, folks said, and would most likely be the Colonel’s heir, with Miss Amy, as folks called her now.  Had Miss Smith ever heard of her?

Eloise never had, and the pain in her ankle was so sharp that she gave little heed to what Mrs. Biggs was saying.  She did not know either of the young men, she said.  Both had been kind to her, and one, she thought, was a stranger, who came in the train with her.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Biggs answered briskly.  “I remember now.  Cindy,—­that’s Miss Stiles, the housekeeper at Crompton Place,—­told me Mr. Howard was to have company,—­another high buck, I s’pose, though Howard don’t do nothin’ worse than drive horses pretty fast, and smoke most all the time.  Drinks wine at dinner, they say, which I disbelieve in on account of Tim, who never took nothin’ stronger’n sweet cider through a straw.”

At last, to Eloise’s relief, Mrs. Biggs said good-night, and left her with the remark, “I don’t s’pose you’ll sleep a wink.  I didn’t the first night after my sprain, nor for a good many nights neither.”

CHAPTER V

AMY

“If this isn’t a lark I never had one,” Howard said to Jack, when they were safely housed and had changed their clothes, not a thread of which was dry.