“Oh, yes; he says you’re very fond of him, and begged me not to break his arrival to you too abruptly, lest the sudden joy should be too much for you!”
Rosalie laughed outright. Her silvery laughter was very sweet, from its rarity, and Mark found it charming. He caught her gaily, and kissed her cheek. Oh, that burning cheek! it sobered him directly. He took his hat, and went to fetch Uncle Billy.
CHAPTER XXX.
AN ORIGINAL.
“He seeth only what is fair,
He sippeth only what is sweet;
He will laugh at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat.”—Emerson.
And Rosalie passed into a large, square, well-ordered kitchen, over which presided another Billy—Mrs. Attridge’s ex-servant, and now Rosalie’s maid-of-all-work. And the short history of the transfer of his services was this: Mr. and Mrs. Attridge, having no family, grew lonely, and tired of housekeeping in the country. So they broke up, sold their furniture, rented out their place, and came to Shelton, and took rooms at Garner’s Hotel.
So Billy was out of a place. A great many housekeepers would have been glad to hire him. But Billy, like all invaluable geniuses, had a great many eccentricities and difficulties to be got over. He wouldn’t live in a row of houses, or in any sort of a house that wasn’t a handsome house, in a large space, with trees round it. He wouldn’t live in a family that had babies, or hadn’t cows and a garden. Poultry was also indispensable, and pigs totally inadmissible. And lastly, he wouldn’t live—no, not in town or country, neither for love nor money, with anybody who was not good-looking. There—to use Billy’s own words—he set his foot down, and no one could move him from that position. And so it fell out that Billy would accept no place in Shelton, but continued hanging on to the skirts of his old master and mistress, at Garner’s Hotel.
But one day, it happened that Rosalie, after she had dismissed her afternoon school, stood at her nice white kitchen table kneading bread for supper, when a shadow darkened the door, and the sound of something dumped suddenly down upon the floor, caused her to turn round. There stood Billy, in his pale blue cotton jacket and trousers, and clean linen apron and straw hat, with a great bundle at his back, and a heavy trunk at his feet. Down he dropped the bundle upon the trunk, and heaving a deep sigh of relief, said—