“From the fairy godmother. You shall hear all about it,” she whispered back. “Oh, my darling, you do not know half.”
“You must stay and see the minuet. We are going to have it at seven o’clock; so those who want to see it will not have to wait long,” Persis informed these latest arrived guests.
And very soon the pretty, stately movement was begun. The boys from the university had been in training for weeks, and in their powdered wigs, lace ruffles, and quaint, elegant costumes made fitting partners for the girls in their old-fashioned array.
“Lisa, the queenly,” as the girls called her, with Ned Carew, led the couples, and no one could have been a truer embodiment of grace than herself. It was the greatest joy of her evening, the pleasure of which had become marred by the incident in which Annis had borne so prominent a part, for it was Annis who was sought after as the heroine of a romance, Annis who was admired and congratulated. “We Holmes girls are nowhere,” Lisa remarked, half defiantly, to Mellicent, and the very fact of her chagrin no doubt gave added stateliness to her treading of the minuet’s slow measure.
CHAPTER VIII.
COMPLICATIONS.
But Persis little foresaw what her interest in Annis’s ancestry was to develop, nor how it would affect the whole family. The first storm of indignation fell upon her devoted head the next day, when Lisa and Mellicent burst in upon her as she sat absorbed in one of her new Christmas books.
“A nice thing you have done for us all,” began Lisa. “I just wish you had let those Browns alone; but, as you are such a stickler for justice, maybe you will enjoy having your chickens come home to roost.”
“Why, what have I done?” Persis asked, innocently, looking up from her book.
“You have done everything. Poor, dear grandma, whom you profess to love so much; and now you’ve deliberately robbed her! Yes, robbed her, when she does so like to be Lady Bountiful; all for the sake of that meechin Mrs. Brown and her meek little milksop of a daughter.”