"Where are those papers?" inquired Miss Ri suddenly putting an end to the nonsense. "Bring them into the sitting-room, Berk, and we will get them done with. I'm going up to town to-morrow, and we may as well finish up this business before I go."
"One of your mysterious errands, Miss Ri?" said Berkley smiling.
"Never mind what it is; that is none of your concern. You don't suppose because you collect my rents, and look after my leases that you must know every time I buy a paper of hairpins."
"You don't have to go up to the city for those, you see. It is my private opinion, Miss Linda, that she makes a semi-annual visit to a fortune-teller or some one of that ilk. I notice she is more than ordinarily keen when she gets back after one of these trips."
"Come along, come along," interrupted Miss Ri. "You'll stand here talking all night. I declare you are as bad as Becky Hill."
"Oh, yes, I'm coming, Miss Ri. Do you know Mrs. Hill, Miss Linda? and did you ever hear what her sister, Mrs. Phil Reed says of her?"
"I know Mrs. Hill, yes, indeed, but I never heard the speech. What was it?"
"You know what a talker Mrs. Becky is. Mrs. Reed refers to it in this way. 'Becky, dear child, is so sympathetic, so interested in others that she exhausts herself by giving out so much to her friends.'"
"I should say it was the friends who were exhausted," returned Linda. But here Miss Ri suddenly turned out the lights leaving them to grope their way to the sitting-room where the papers were signed and then Berkley was, as Miss Ri termed it, driven out.
The steamboat which left at six o'clock every evening bore Miss Ri away on its next trip. It was an all night journey down the river and up the bay, and therefore, Miss Ri would not return till the morning of the second day when the boat arrived on its voyage from the city.