"No trouble at all, sir," said Mary; "it's a real pleasure to do anything we can for you: especially remembering the Master's words, 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.'"
CHAPTER XXI.
"How happy they
Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives,
Steal to look down where nought but ocean strives."
—Byron.
Violet was alone, lying on the bed, resting after her bath, not asleep, but thinking dreamily of home and mother.
"Only one more day and my week here will be up," she was saying to herself. "I've had a delightful time, but oh I want to see mamma and the rest!"
Just then the door opened and Mary came in with a face all smiles. "O Vi, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed, seating herself on the side of the bed.
"What about, cousin?" Violet asked, rousing herself, and with a keen look of interest.
"I have just had the offer of a furnished cottage for two or three weeks—to keep house in, you understand—and I can invite several friends to stay with me, and it won't cost half so much as boarding here, beside being great fun," Mary answered, talking very fast in her excitement and delight. "Charlie will stay with me, I think, and I hope you and Edward will, and I have two girl friends at home whom I shall invite. One is an invalid, and needs the change, oh so badly; but though they are not exactly poor people, not the kind one would dare offer charity to, her father couldn't afford to give her even a week at any of these hotels or boarding-houses: and she did look so wistful and sad when I bade her good-bye. 'I can hardly help envying you, Mary,' she said, 'though I am ever so glad you are going. But I have such a longing to get away from home for a while—to go somewhere, anywhere, for a change. I'm so weak and miserable, and it seems to me that if I could only go away I should get well. I haven't been outside of this town for years.'"