"Oh, ja! I carry him mysel', und den I have him alretty und can make quick de tea for de mistress—right so soon as she gits here!"
And before the van had been emptied a dust-covered hack arrived, with four people inside and several boxes and a trunk sharing the top with the driver. A mounted policeman, loitering along Broadway and watching the debarkation, saw John Lawton—tall and thin and almost white-haired, a gentleman without a doubt—descending. Then an elderly lady, with surprisingly red cheeks glowing through a dotted veil, followed, and then—"Oh, by Jove!" muttered the blue-coat, as out sprang, one after the other, the two young girls, as fresh and bright and full of bubbling laughter as the day was bright and full of sunshine and bird song. Suddenly a voice cried: "Sybil—O Sybil, take care—you've broken the package of bird seed!"
And with a laugh the girl addressed caught up her skirt to save the falling seeds, revealing as she did so a pair of pretty feet, that presently began to dance wildly about as their owner cried: "Dorothy—O Dorothy! did you see it—a robin? it's over there!"
And up went two veils, and two young faces turned eagerly toward the spot where Mr. Robin, with black cap, yellow bill, and orange-red breast, sat and looked at them with round black eyes, quite unmoved by their human beauty, as was right and proper—seeing that he was himself a bridegroom just settling in life. But the policeman suddenly put his horse to the gallop, and in an hour's time everyone in the village knew that the Lawtons had arrived, that they were gentlefolk, and that the two girls were "regular beauties." While at Woodsedge, secure in the privacy the screening evergreens provided, the Lawtons turned to and assisted the small German maid in setting up their somewhat battered household gods upon the altars that had been so long empty and cold in that sad old house.
As Mrs. Lawton crossed the sagging porch the front door was held open by Lena, who, curtseying and smiling her widest, flattest smile, told her that "She was com' at de right place und she vas velcom' alretty as anyt'ing," the dignity of this reception being somewhat marred by the fact that Lena was hooking herself up as she spoke, she having hastily exchanged her Sunday clothes for her working ones.
"Ah," moaned the welcomed mistress to her following husband and daughters, "in former years my butler and housekeeper would have received me, and with their clothes all on" (the girls choked audibly), "but," sighed Mrs. Lawton, "that was before your poor misguided father had lost everything for us!"
"Including the servants' clothes," whispered Dorothy, and with a "Poor papa!" each girl gave him a pat on the arm as, passing him by, they took hold of their mother, and with much loving bustle got her bonnet and veil and gloves and beady mantle off and put her into the only chair yet brought into the house, where, with a soap-box beneath her feet, she could sit and comfortably give directions that no one heeded, and scold people who were unconscious that they were the objects of her wrath. Some shades were up, two carpets were down, and a gruesome old piano stood, glooming, from one end of the sitting-room, before the girls would consent to have lunch, for, said Sybil, "That piano, that noble instrument of perfect tone and action, standing outside on the grass, was a direct challenge to Heaven to send down rain."
"My dear," mildly remonstrated Mr. Lawton, "don't be sarcastic."
"John!" interrupted Mrs. Lawton, "I don't see why you should accuse the child of being sarcastic. You must remember that in about the seventies some of our greatest pianists sat before that instrument, which was one of my many wedding gifts, and Sybil very reasonably called it a piano of perfect tone and action. You should not be so ready to criticise your children, John. Oh, I do hope that tea is going to be strong, my dears, for I am positively beyond speech." A declaration which lost considerable of its force when she continued to describe the glorious past of her rosewood monster, until she was silenced momentarily by a cup of strong tea. For, camping in all the wild confusion of boxes and bundles, they proceeded to enjoy a luncheon of bread and butter and chipped dried beef, with the soul-reviving accompaniment of fragrant though forbidden green tea. Just as Mrs. Lawton, groaning over the thickness of the bread, was starting out to describe the transparent thinness of the slices cut by some bondwoman of the past, Lena, all smiles, came tramping in with a boiled egg in a shaving-mug:
"Youst for de mistress," she announced, and placed the mug on that lady's knee. "Dat's youst laid fresh dis minute alretty. Wat you t'ink of dat, eh?"