“She doesn’t quite know,” Corinne returned. “Either to Mexico or Brazil. She hasn’t decided yet, but now that the South is beaten there isn’t any place in this country for ladies and gentlemen to live. At least that’s what Ma says.”
“Fiddlesticks!” Harriot muttered, and marched into the house.
They found Mrs. Stewart in the parlor, sewing as if her life depended upon her speed.
“Harriot, my love, I’m overjoyed to see you,” she greeted her niece in a tearful voice, hardly looking up from her work. “I’m making a running bag to tie inside my hoops. I shall put my diamonds in it when I go to Mexico. I suppose your mother has everything ready to leave?”
“Why, no, Aunt Cora,” Harriot replied, going over and kissing the cheek upturned for her salute. “We hadn’t heard of this English insult, but I don’t think it will make any difference to us. I’ve brought my cousin, Dorothea Drummond, to call on you.”
“How do you do, my dear,” Mrs. Stewart murmured, stopping long enough to look up at Dorothea and hold out a couple of fingers. “You come among us in sad days. I don’t know when we shall start, but it can’t be long now. Do you know anything about Brazil, by any chance?”
Dorothea confessed that she did not.
“It seems very hard to find anybody that does,” Mrs. Stewart went on, in the same melancholy way. “And yet Brazil is quite a well-known place, I’m told. And it certainly sounds more interesting than Mexico. It makes me think of birds, though I don’t know why. However, we shall soon be flitting somewhere like the birds. And there’s so much to be done. I was going to bury the silver yesterday; but then it occurred to me that I would have to dig up the whole garden to hide the spot from the negroes, and I really didn’t feel equal to it last night.”
“Aunt Cora,” Harriot cried, “how can you say such things? You’ll give Dorothea such a wrong impression. You know our servants are all loyal.”
Mrs. Stewart wagged her head doubtfully over her sewing.