“Why, goodness me, Em’ly Ponsonby! This ain’t you? I never was so surprised in all my life as when Mary gave me your card! And we have just this minute sat down to tea; and you will come down and have some?” said the landlady, in the softest and most caressing voice, that seemed to be perfectly natural to her.
“No, thank you, Sophie Downie,” replied Mrs. Ponsonby, as she arose and embraced her fat little friend. “I am in the greatest hurry that ever was, and only called here on my way from the depot to Sam Saxony’s to bring you a new boarder, a very dear young friend of mine, who came with me from Baltimore to get something to do in New York here. Miss—— Good Lord of mercy! I don’t know the child’s name!” said the good woman to herself, as she arose and went to Lilith, and whispered:
“What name, dear—what name?”
“Wyvil,” answered Lilith, in the same low tone.
“My young friend, Miss Wildell, wants a quiet, respectable home just such as you could furnish her,” resumed Mrs. Ponsonby, rejoining the landlady.
“Oh! Another Southern orphan, ruined by the war!” said kindly Mrs. Downie.
“Ah! poor thing!” replied the Baltimore lady, in a non-committal way. “I hope you can take her. She has some little money left, I think.”
“And she wants to get in one of the public schools? Poor girl! there ain’t the least chance.”
“No, I don’t think she wants to teach—but the question is, can you accommodate her?”
“I must ’commodate her somehow or other. I haven’t got a room; but if she could put up with a cot in my room——”