"Well, you ain't left stranded," she said.

"You've got your home here." Rose looked gratefully at her.

"You do make me feel as if I had, and I don't know what I should do if you did not, but"-- she frowned perplexedly--"all the same, one would not have thought they would have gone off in this way without giving me a moment's notice," she said, in rather an injured fashion, "after I have lived with them so long.

I never thought they really cared much about me.

Mrs.Wilton and Miss Pamela look too hard at their own tracks to get much interest in anybody or anything outside; but starting off in this way! They might have thought that I would like to go--at least they might have told me." Suddenly her frown of perplexity cleared away.