“Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be happy to see you.” What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an inestimable value I set upon her friendship!

Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, “Go back to Dora!” and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near foreleg against it, and “took the bark off,” as his owner told me, “to the tune of three pun’ sivin”⁠—which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses⁠—and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.