“O may we go up to the attic and dress up?” begged Ethelwyn.

“After while,” said grandmother.  “It is luncheon time now.  I am glad you came to-day, my daughter, for Nancy, the housemaid, has gone home for a week’s rest, and there is a meeting of the women of the church this afternoon to arrange about a rummage sale, and a loan exhibition, and they are rather depending upon me to contribute to both; but as Nancy is away, I cannot well leave for I am a little overtired with more duties than usual.  So I have made a list of things that I will lend, and give.  I should like you to take it down.”

“Yes, mother, I will, but what about the children—?”

“O mother, please let me stay,” begged Beth.  “I will take excellent care of grandmother, and I will take Nancy’s place, so grandmother can lie down; I know how, I’ve watched Nancy lots of times.  You can take sister.”

This was the final arrangement, and soon after luncheon they drove away to town.  Grandmother disappeared up the beautiful staircase after shutting the blind doors, and shading the hall from the afternoon sun.

Then Beth arrayed in a red sweeping cap, instead of Nancy’s white one, which she and cook failed to find, and armed with a huge silver salver for cards, instead of Nancy’s small one, took up her position in the hall, on the bottom stair, to await visitors:  but the hall was full of slumberous shadows, with sunshine flecks dancing down from the blind doors to the polished floor.  It is not strange, therefore, that by and by the red sweeping cap began to droop over the silver salver, until finally they all settled down together, and the new parlor maid was sound asleep, to the music of the tall old clock in the corner of the hall back under the stairway.

Then some one came up the walk, and rapped briskly with the end of his riding whip on the blind doors.

The parlor maid suddenly awoke, stumbled to the door, and fumbled with the fastenings, but it was no use, she couldn’t open them; thereupon she turned the slats and looked through at the young clergyman standing there.

The red cap nodded affably.

“Could you climb in through the window, s’pose?” she asked.

This was such a new and startling novelty at the Van Stark homestead, that the visitor laughed, while the parlor maid patiently waited for his decision.

He had shone in athletics at his college, so when he stopped laughing, he put his hands on the stone window-sill leading into the library, and vaulted in so lightly and easily, that Beth was delighted to think she had thought of it.

She then went back to adjust her sweeping cap, which had dropped off, and to pick up the salver, which she had put down to free her hands.

“Put your card there,” she instructed him, bobbing her head towards the exact centre of the salver, and thereby completely covering one eye with that abominably big and wobbly cap.