"I sha'n't be one minute," shouted Hecla gleefully, as she rushed away.
But everything seemed to conspire to hinder her. First she broke her shoe-string, and though she managed to tie it somehow, that took time, as she was not handy with her fingers. Then she could not find her everyday hat, and she remembered leaving it in the greenhouse.
A furious rush downstairs, and a wild stampede through the passage into the greenhouse, resulted in finding the hat was not there; so she flew after Elisabeth, only to be told in Mrs. Prue's tartest tones that Elisabeth was gone out to take a note, and she didn't know nothing about hats. Upstairs again tore Hecla, and dragged open drawer after drawer, to discover the hat at last in the most unlikely one of all, where no doubt she had thrust it herself in one of her scuffles.
Though she was not yet nine years old, her aunts were doing their best to teach her to look after her things, to put them neatly away, and to be careful; but thus far, the teaching had not been always successful.
Hecla rammed the hat on her head, and then her gloves and tie had vanished. Though she would gladly have raced off without either, she knew she would only be sent back again to find them; and these too had to be hunted for high and low. When, after fifteen minutes' delay, she ran downstairs, she found a girl talking to Miss Anne, who stood listening with a troubled face.
"You have been rather long getting ready, dear," she said. "But I am glad we have not started, for Mrs. Gilpin's poor little baby has been badly hurt, and I must go to see it. I will be as short a time as possible. You and Ivy will wait here for me. You are not to go out till I return."
"But, auntie—auntie—we sha'n't be in time to catch Chris."
"I think we shall. I will do my best. I must tell Mrs. Gilpin how to manage till the doctor comes."
"I couldn't find my hat and things. I know, I know we shall be late!" Hecla was almost in tears.
"I hope not; but think of the poor baby! Wait here for me, both of you."