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perhaps the fifth time) to little Sally Clemp, the coachman’s wife. Not twelve hours had gone by since Anne’s scene with Ensley, not twenty-four since Mr. Dent’s evil visit, but already she had given her orders: Number 3 must be packed up.
    “Does she think we’re witches, you and I?” thehousekeeper went on. “Does she think we’re conjurers, that we can wave our hands and say Puff! ’Tis all done? And Dolphim sent all over town, as if he was nothing but the boots or a backstairs page or I don’t know what…Told to fetch this, leave that, see to t’other! Thirty years in service I’ve been, thirty years, and never heard such a freakish whim. Cheshire! I’ve known Miss Anne Guilfoyle since before there was a Miss Anne Guilfoyle to know. I come up from Overton with her ladyship, ask Dolphim if I didn’t—”
    Sally, who was tediously wrapping icicle number seventy-six or so of a crystal chandelier that seemed to have several thousand pieces to it, neither doubted Mrs. Dolphim’s assertion nor would have cared one whit had it turned out to be the grossest fabrication. She had been with the household a mere three months, and was only glad to be told she and John would remove along with it, since it was removing. Besides, any fool could guess it was no “freakish whim” of Miss Guilfoyle’s to leave for Cheshire: Something was wrong. Could not Mrs. Dolphim see red eyes when they looked at her? Had not Mrs. Insel, the soul of gentleness on every other occasion, spoke sharp to Minna twice in two hours? And the fact that they were all under strictest orders to say nothing to anyone with regard to how they were going—not to mention to a soul that the house was being packed up, not to say they were taking every stick of furniture, but only to pretend it was a country visit, like as usual? Didn’t that tell Mrs. Thirty Years Dolphim trouble was at the root of it? Besides which, every one in the household knew that Lizzie, Miss Guilfoyle’s abigail, had actually heard Miss Guilfoyle absolutely sobbing! Not that Lizzie told every one herself, of course: She was much too loyal to Miss Guilfoyle to dothat. She only whispered the story to Cook, who mentioned it to Minna, who never was very close with a secret. But, “No use talking to the deaf,” remarked Sally to herself, detaching icicle number seventy-seven, and aloud said only, “Indeed Mrs. Dolphim, yes Mrs. Dolphim, Gracious Goodness!”
    Early on the third day after Mr. Dent’s announcement, Miss Guilfoyle dropped her head back against the red plush squabs of her travelling carriage and gave a long sigh of something like relief. It had been sad—very sad—to quit London; but now that the deed was done and the coach well into Buckinghamshire, a glad sense of having taken some action against her sea of troubles swept through her, lifting her spirits.
    “Off to adventure,” she remarked to Maria, who sat opposite to her in the comfortable carriage. Mrs. Dolphim, Lizzie, and Minna were in the curricle following close behind; Dolphim and the others would come at a slower pace, in a hack-chaise with a train of waggons to carry the furniture. How Anne knew not, but Mr. Dent had contrived not only to free her of what remained on her lease of Number 3, but even to recover the money she had laid out for August and September. This windfall paid the hire of the waggons and the hack-chaise; the four hundred pounds still left of her fortune, meanwhile, was being transmuted into food and other necessaries at an alarming rate. “How long do you suppose one can live on Cheshire cheese?” Anne asked, her thoughts having drifted (as they invariably did of late) to finances.
    “Will not the income of the farm begin at once?” Mrs. Insel inquired, looking out the window at the soft, mistylandscape slipping away (she had insisted on taking the backward seat) into the past.
    “I hope so. Soon enough, Mr. Dent assured me—but from now on, I will believe I have money