“Eh, dear, it’s a tiresome world. What’s that baroness coming here for to-day?”
“To call on me, and I think she wishes to see you, too, so I shall keep her till you come back from market.”
“No, you needn’t! I don’t want to see that baroness! That I don’t,” said Aunt Sophie, as she tied on her little mashed black silk bonnet, which, like her rumpled fine gray hair, and little baby face, was a part of her gentle personality.
“But I want you to see her, Aunt Sophie. I think you’d get over your prejudice against her.”
“No, I shouldn’t! I’m jealous of her. That’s where it is. I’m awful jealous of her, that I am! But I’ll hurry back from market to see her if you want me to. And if I have to do that I must hurry away now.”
And the dear little woman folded her rusty Canton crape shawl across her bosom and left the room.
Lilith set the bed-chamber in order and then went down to the front parlor to await the coming of Madame Von Bruyin.
But it was twelve o’clock before the baroness arrived. Aunt Sophie had come home from market and “fixed herself up” to receive the great lady, by putting on her Sunday gown, a thin, rusty black silk, and tying a bobbinet fichu crookedly around her neck, but she could not sit in state to receive her visitor. She was too busy overseeing the cook get dinner for the boarders.
“Besides, what does she want to see me for, I would like to know?” she asked herself.
So she was shelling peas in the kitchen when word was brought to her that there was a lady in the parlor waiting to see her.