“It’s that that makes me cry,” said the child, looking up through her tears.
Uncle Lawrence, laying his hand on her head in his fatherly manner, said to the orphan,
“I’ve no doubt, my little one, that this lady here is nearer related to you than maybe you or she thinks. But more of that bye and bye,” he continued. “It’s to her house you’re to go, and you ought to thank the Lord, my child, that he’s given you such a friend.”
“Now,” said Kate, kissing her, “you can’t help being my little sister.”
“I’ll be so glad,” murmured the child, hiding her face on Kate’s shoulder, and closely entwining her arms around our heroine, who looked up, smiling through her tears, at Major Gordon and Uncle Lawrence.
Nearly four hours elapsed before the expected vehicle arrived from Sweetwater. During this interval, Kate was urged to snatch some repose, for it will be recollected that excepting the short period she slept by accident the night before, she had not closed her eyes for thirty-six hours, while, meantime, she had undergone the greatest fatigue of body and mind. But her nerves were still too excited from the agitating events which had followed her first capture, to permit her to compose herself to sleep; and besides, she shrank from re-entering the chamber where she had passed a night of such agonizing suspense.
Mrs. Warren’s joyful consternation, when she heard of Kate’s safety, it is almost impossible to describe. The effect of the news was completely paralyzing to her, as much so, for awhile, indeed, as if it had been intelligence the most disastrous.
For quite a minute the servants thought she was dying, and being, to use one of their own expressions, “a’most as flustered as herself,” they did all sorts of absurd things in the effort to help her. Pomp’s father seized a flower-vase, which Kate had arranged the preceding morning, and threw its contents into her face, plants and water alike. Dinah, his wife, attempted to cut the good lady’s stays with the back of a bread-knife, with which she had rushed in from the kitchen, being engaged in slicing a loaf when she heard the uproar. The maid screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran out of the room, with a vague design of seeking a vinaigrette bottle in one of the chambers; but she finally captured a phial of patent medicine, which Mrs. Warren patronized, as many excellent old dowagers will, and unconscious of her error, rushed back again, screaming as fast as ever, and popped the horrible compound under the dame’s nose. Between the application of Jim, and this of the maid, Mrs. Warren soon came to; and it was fortunate for her she did; for, as one of the news-bearers said, in rehearsing the tale afterwards,— “they’d have killed her next, seein’ that we was so frightened by the infernal screechin’ of that Frenchified gal, with the physic-bottle, that we thought the old ‘oman had gone for sartain.”
When Kate at length arrived at Sweetwater, the good dame had recovered her usual equanimity. Having improved the interval to repair the disorder of her attire, she now appeared in all her ordinary pomp of costume; her voluminous furbelowed gown sweeping half the room; her high, red-heeled shoes pattering, as she rushed down the porch; and the powder flying like snow from her tower-like head-dress, and perfuming the air around her, as if the wind blew from a spice-garden.
Extending her arms, into which Kate threw herself, she said,