“Oh, we couldn’t think of it, ma’am, indeed!” answered the housekeeper, drawing away.
Gloria urged and David pleaded, but Mrs. Brent persisted in her refusal, until at length Gloria got up and left the table, saying:
“Very well, then, I will not eat a single morsel of dinner until you and Phil join us.”
“Oh, I’ll submit at once,” laughed Philippa, taking one of the vacant chairs.
“Do, Mrs. Brent, humor the fancy of our willful little lady,” said David Lindsay, as he arose and placed his hand on the back of another chair, inviting the old woman to take it.
“You are a couple of spoiled children, that’s what you are, and you ought both to be at school instead of being married, and that is the fact,” laughed the housekeeper, as, not really unwillingly, she took her place at the table with the genial young pair.
“Now, that is settled. The precedent—don’t they call it a precedent in the courts of law, David?—the precedent is established. Henceforth you are to take your meals with us, dear Mrs. Brent, just as if you were our mother, and Philippa were our sister; for we have neither mother nor sister on this earth—I mean David nor I—and, besides, really, we four are too few to be separated in this lonesome place,” said the little lady of the house, as she settled herself to enjoy her dinner as well as she could under the circumstances and the memory of the afternoon’s horror.
It was a very limited dinner, consisting of just what was at hand and could be cooked in a hurry; but it was a very dainty dinner, notwithstanding; there were delicious broiled venison steaks, light biscuits, fresh butter, a baked custard, preserved mountain cherries, tea, coffee and cream.
David Lindsay and Mrs. Brent fully appreciated the good things, and proved that they did so.
But neither Gloria nor Philippa could so far overcome the effect of that ghastly terror in the cave as to relish anything that was set before them.