Onoye had joyfully and gratefully consented to this arrangement, providing she might act as Miss Campbell's maid in the meantime.
O'Haru had made an heroic effort to be glad, also. She would continue to be the Spears' housekeeper, she said, and wait for her daughter to return to Japan with "muchly honorable learning."
During the hot weeks when Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids were sojourning in the mountains, old "great grandmama Nedda" had also passed into another sphere. Her ending was peaceful, they said; she had slipped quietly away one day at sunset. The faithful servants buried the gentle creature in the garden not far from the shrine of the Compassionate God. When the girls returned they set up a little wooden monument in her memory on which Mary printed in India ink the following inscription:
"NEDDA"
Died August 27, 19—
Aged 21.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar."
"Here comes someone," announced Billie, peering from the window of the drawing-room. "It's Mr. Buxton, I think, and he's heavily laden with parcels, apparently."
In another moment, the bachelor himself stood in the doorway regarding the charming picture with his half-humorous, half-grave expression.
"There were only three Graces, were there not?" he asked. "I've forgotten. It's been so long since I met them. But there should have been four."