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Rh ence for the summer. She had earlier intimated her willingness to accompany us to country solitudes, and without her, I should be in a sad plight. "Surely!" I said to myself, "she could not have found occasion for serious offense in my slight rebuke of the morning, so ridiculously inadequate to the real situation. Yet one never knows. The unlikeliest is the most likely where maids are concerned." Though I tried hard to dismiss the subject, I was conscious of much inward disquiet.

Scarcely had I got my hat off after returning, when I heard Charlotte's steps in the corridor making for my room. "Milk-tickets are all gone, ma'am," I murmured to myself reminiscently, reaching for my pocketbook. But it was not milk-tickets this time; far from it. "I've come to tell you, ma'am," said Charlotte, entering the room at my bidding, "that I'm leavin'."

There was suppressed excitement in her tone, not to say triumph. The sword had fallen.

"Leaving, Charlotte!" I said as pleasantly as I could when I got my breath, and with a calmness that almost surprised myself.

"Yes, Ma'am, on the twentieth o' June."