Brown bent down and smoothed the girl's hair with his hand. Then he turned from her with tears in his eyes, and crept out of the room.
Caroline followed him with wistful eyes until the door closed. Then she turned to Eliza.
"Oh! Eliza, do this one thing for me, if you can. Let, let no one come in to-night. I can endure no more."
"They'll have to knock me down and trample on me if they do, that is all," answered the hand-maiden. "My gracious! How I wish we were in our own little house again up in Sing-Sing."
"Oh! if we were!" sighed the girl. "Why did we ever leave it?"
"Because we were a couple of born fools, that's why!" answered the maid. "Born fools! and I the biggest, the oldest, the most outrageous fool of all! Wasn't we independent? Couldn't you have took scholars, and I washing by the dozen? Hadn't we the sweetest little garden in that whole town? such cabbages, such onions, and lettuce headed like cabbage, and tender as—as flowers! Whenever I get sick over these French dishes, I think of that garden, and the cow, and the shoat that knew me when I came to the pen with corn in my apron, and gave a little grunt, as if I'd been his sister. Then my heart turns back to the old home, like a sunflower, and I say to myself, You perposterous old maid, you! what did you let that poor young thing come from under that honest roof for? You was old enough to know better, if she wasn't; but you had an idea of seeing the world, of dressing up and being a lady's maid, of hearing whole crowds of young men stamp and clap and whistle over that innocent young cretur. You didn't think that she might faint dead away, and—and be brought home heart-broken. Home, indeed! as if this box of gilding could be a home to any American woman! It's perposterous!"
Here Eliza broke off with a half-uttered word on her lips, for her speech had brought the old home back so vividly to the heart-sick girl that she was sobbing upon her pillow like a child.
A little bustle down stairs, a knock at the door, and, as Eliza ran forward, Olympia pushed it open and came in.
She saw Caroline prostrate on the bed, with that delicate robe wrapped around and crushed under her, and the lace shawl falling from the pillow to the carpet, like a trail of frost.
The sight urged her into one of those quick passions that sometimes threw her whole household into consternation.