"Well, Miss Wisdom, wont you suggest something?"
"Certainly. Frank," replied Ellen. "Sister Agatha always took quite a liking for me, because I was her scholar I suppose, and an American, and she and the Superior, who is a very good-natured person, came immediately to see me, when I was sick last summer, and afterward called very often. Now, if papa is willing, when your ship is ready to sail I'll fall sick again and send for Sister Agatha, who will be sure to come with some one else, but she can slip out through the court after awhile, and down the garden-walk here to the river, and go into your boat, which shall be waiting, and then you can take her off to the ship."
"That is a capital plan, dear Ellen," said I, "but there is one grand objection to it."
"Oh, no! I think not; but yonder comes papa with mother, and William is saying fine things to Mary, behind them."
"Ah, Frank!" cried Mr. Stowe, as we made our appearance, "we were looking for you. I did not know but that you had run away with Ellen."
"No," said I, "not yet; but we were contriving the best plan to run away with a nun."
"Hush! you fool!" whispered Langley, pinching my arm.
"Go to thunder!" was the reply, "I know what I'm about." I then related to Mr. Stowe the story the reader well knows, and which I found Mr. Stowe knew very well also, and finally disclosed Ellen's very excellent plan for the deliverance of my cousin.
"If," said Mr. Stowe, in reply, when I had finished, "if you can get sister Agatha's consent to elope at the proper time, Ellen may fall sick if she pleases. I may be suspected in having a hand in the matter; but if the affair is properly managed, they can do no more than suspect, and that I care nothing about, as I'm going to move back to Boston in the spring. But the grand difficulty you will find to be in persuading Sister Agatha to break her vow."
"Let me alone for that," replied I, "if I can only have an interview with her."
"That is easily done," said Mary Stowe, "the nuns are allowed to see their friends at the grate."
"And I will go with you to the convent to-morrow, and engage the superior's attention while you talk with your cousin," added her father.
In the evening Langley and I held a council of war, wherein it was decided, _nem. con_., that our plot was in a fair way to be accomplished.
