“A very good breakfast. Now you sit here and play your organ until we get ours,” said Miss Fronde, lifting the child from her lap and seating her on the steps.
Owlet gathered up her work and rose, and the two went into the house and sat down to the table in the pleasant room, where four windows opened, two upon the old garden and two upon the woods, whence came in the fresh morning air, laden with the perfume of flowers and the songs of birds.
As soon as the meal was over Roma said to Owlet:
“We will go to our lessons at once, and get them through before Dr. Shaw comes. I expect him about noon.”
So little Ducky Darling was called in, and the three went into the sitting-room, where Miss Fronde seated herself in her favorite rocker, with her knitting in her hand, and the two children sat side by side on little chairs that had been hunted out of the lumber room in the attic and brought down for their use.
Owlet had a primary geography in her hand and Ducky Darling an A B C card between her fingers and her teeth, imbibing letters after her own fashion.
Quiet reigned in the little circle. Roma felt strangely tranquilized; Owlet was pleased with her study of continents and oceans; and Ducky Darling was delighted only to be allowed to sit beside the little playmate she loved so well, and who seemed to her like an angel of light and beauty.
An hour passed on without interruption, and then the sound of wheels was heard rolling toward the house.
“That must be Dr. Shaw,” said Roma, as she left her chair to look from her window. “And yet it cannot be, for it is but ten o’clock, and at this hour he is in the church, engaged in performing that marriage ceremony of which he wrote.”
Then a misgiving that the visitor might be Hanson come again, seized her. She was about to leave the room to lock the front door, when she saw the carriage stop, and—Lawyer Merritt get out of it.