“You may run along now, Lucy,” she told the maid; “I’ll finish Miss Dorothea.”
“Yes’m,” Lucy replied, but she went reluctantly, with many backward glances.
“I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at you in your finery before any one else, my dear,” Miss Imogene began. “I wanted to see how far behind the times our patterns are—and things look so different in the hand.”
She, herself, was dressed with care, and, though there were wanting touches here and there to show the very latest whim of fashion, her hoops were as wide as Dorothea’s and she looked as dainty as a picture.
She put the finishing touches to Dorothea’s toilet and then sat down with a little gesture of invitation to the girl to occupy a chair near her.
“We’ve a few minutes before all is ready downstairs, and I thought you’d like to know something of the people you are to meet,” Miss Imogene suggested.
“Indeed I should,” Dorothea agreed, making herself comfortable. “It’s awfully awkward if you don’t know who is related to you and all about them. And I have lived so far from my American relatives, haven’t I?”
Miss Imogene nodded understandingly, at the same moment slipping a dainty finger inside a red velvet band she wore about her neck as if it might be a little tight. As she did this she glanced at Dorothea rather keenly and a few moments later made a gesture as if to brush back the hair from her forehead.
“First of all there’s your Cousin Hal,” Miss Imogene began. “The dearest boy I know. He’s fighting, of course.”
She named over half a dozen others of those who were living for the time being at the Mays. Two or three ladies “refugeeing,” or on their way to other points and breaking the journey at Washington; a number of officers in the Confederate Army, busy all day with duties of one sort or another, consisting mainly of gathering food or horses wherever they could be found.