"It seems like Alice through the looking-glass," Lucy thought to herself, her lips twitching with amusement. "Everything is turned around to-day. Suppose you eat something yourself, for a change," she countered, glancing at Marian's empty plate.
After lunch she went up-stairs to change her dress, with a look at the fresh white one Marian had found time to put on when the pictures were finished. She was soberly brushing her hair with hard slaps of the brush, before the glass, when Elizabeth passed by the door and stopped at sight of her.
"I fasten your dress, Miss Lucy, shall I?" she asked, hesitating in the doorway.
"Yes, please do," said Lucy, feeling suddenly very much like hearing Elizabeth's quiet, pleasant voice. "Sit down and wait until I finish my hair and then you may help me."
"So you are not too long, I wait," consented Elizabeth, coming in the room and commencing to hang up clothes and put away shoes instead of sitting down as Lucy had suggested.
"Oh, Elizabeth, I hated so to have Bob go," Lucy could not help saying, the thoughts she had kept back all day clamoring for utterance. "It was so hard to have him here only two days,—and, oh, I wish to goodness you weren't going too!"
Elizabeth paused in her work, her hand on the closet door, and regarded Lucy with sad face and wistful eyes.
"It is not that I wish to go, Miss Lucy," she protested, shaking her head slowly and twisting nervous fingers in her big apron. "It is very hard for me to leave you all so dear to me and go to a strange country."
"Where are you going?" asked Lucy, tying her hair ribbon in a hasty bow as she crossed the room to Elizabeth's side.