With a cry of joy, the delighted hostess embraced the beggar, rags and all.
“Adelaine Drexel,” she exclaimed, “this is the most wonderful surprise. Why didn’t you write me that you were coming? Or, Doris, why didn’t you tell me?”
Then turning to the smiling housekeeper, the girl exclaimed: “Mrs. Gray, this is my dear little playmate. We have lived next door to each other ever since our doll days. You’ve heard me speak of Adelaine Drexel just steens of times.”
Then slipping her arm about the laughing beggar girl, she led the way up to her room. Ten minutes later they reappeared. Adelaine had shed her shabby costume and looked like a rose fairy in a pretty pink gown.
When the young people were seated around the blazing log in the library, the stately Colonel Wainright appeared and was gladly greeted by all. Then Mrs. Gray called: “Come, children; supper is ready.”
Geraldine laughed. “I just can’t impress Mrs. Gray with my age and dignity. She always will call me ‘little girl.’”
“I think she is the dearest old lady,” Adelaine Drexel declared. “She’s just my ideal of a grandmother. I am so glad that she is here with you.”
Geraldine’s own ideas about how one should feel toward an “upper servant” had undergone such a complete change that she now replied with enthusiasm: “I do love Mrs. Gray. She is very superior to her position. She is the Colonel’s housekeeper, you know.”
In the brightly lighted dining-room the young people were standing while the little old lady designated their places. Geraldine noticed that she was giving up her own seat at one end of the table for the unexpected guest.
“Oh, Mrs. Gray,” she intervened. “You have forgotten our plan. You are to sit there. I won’t need a chair just at first, for I am going to serve.”