Then with her moon face all red with heat and hurry Lena rushed out with a package of hot cookies, crying: "I bake dem cake youst by der train time, und dere blazes hot! But I tie 'em mit a long string so you don't com' burnt by der hants!"
Mrs. Lawton came to the door and indignantly demanded: "What folly and presumption is this, Lena Klippert? Retire at once and take your obnoxious offering with you!"
"Den you don' vant dem cookies, my Miss Lady? You tink I com' by der cheek, uf I bring 'em here?" poor Lena quavered, shamefacedly.
But Sybil fitted the looped string over her finger and flashed a radiant smile at the faithful little German drudge, and, dangling the package in the air, quoted:
"'This little pig went to market!' Just wait till to-night, Lena, when I'm alone in my room, and the little pig will have cookies, eh?"
"Ja! ja!" nodded and smiled Lena. "You com' make very fine little pig, Miss Sybbils; sometimes you can com' black, but ven you smiles, your lips youst curl up like a flower!"
And, amid general laughter, Sybil departed for the city with Leslie doing escort duty, while John and Dorothy Lawton received an informing lecture upon the structure, quality, and quantity of brain to be found in the low-class Germans that nicely filled up the rest of their afternoon.
At Mrs. Van Camp's house Sybil's return was followed almost immediately by the announcement from the wearer of the mulberry livery of: "A person—an elderly female person—to see you, ma'am; by appointment, she claims, ma'am. Show her up? Yes, ma'am. Hem! if you'll excuse the boldness—Mr. Poll's in the library, and he do be swearing awful, beyond anythink, ma'am. What for is it? Why, ma'am, someone—I suppose it's the young lady, ma'am—put a shaving-glass in his cage, and he's been cussin' of he'self ever since he laid eyes on it. Shall I be carryin' him to the basement, or covering him up? I don't know. Yes, ma'am, I'll take him down as you say." And a few moments later he returned, haughtily ushered in Mrs. Jane Stivers, and retired.
Sybil, entering by the opposite door, saw a thin, elderly woman, whose dark hair sprinkled with gray and banded smoothly down over each ear, whose small, dark eyes, whose thin, pale-lipped, closely closed mouth, and long, drooping nose spelled as plainly as letters could the word—discreet. Her black gown and unspeakably respectable bonnet, her thick but plain cloak, her neat cashmere gloves, were all prim adjuncts to that picture of discretion. She stood in true servant-like attitude, eyes down and hands crossed at the exact waist-line; and as Sybil reached her god-mother's side that lady, raising her glasses to look at the stranger, said: "Mrs. Stivers, I wish to—why! why! you're Martin—you are surely Jane Martin?" and sat staring.
"Yes, Madam Van Camp," she replied, "I am Jane that was in your sewing-room three years and more. I didn't think you'd remember a servant's face so long, so I didn't tell Mr. Thrall I'd been in your service. My husband was a boss carpenter in a theatre, and that took me there. Me being a good needle-woman, I got work in the wardrobe, and gradually learned the business thorough-like; and when my husband died, as I wanted to hold on to the house, I began taking lodgers as well as working at the theatre, so as to pay off the mortgage some time, I do hope, ma'am."