“I don’t know what time it leaves Washington, ma’am, but it passes through Alexandry at five.”
“Then it must start at about three or half-past. Leo! hurry down stairs; tell your mother and Pina to come to me immediately. Then go to the stable and put the horses to the carriage, and prepare yourself to drive me to town, and be as quick as you possibly can; do you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered the amazed boy, making his awkward bow, and going on his errand.
Drusilla, with a marvellous new life in her system, arose and went to her bureau drawers and began hastily to select certain indispensable conveniences for her journey, and to pack them into a travelling bag.
Ah! at that moment, and under those circumstances what painful feelings that pretty Turkey morocco bag awakened; for “sorrow’s crown of sorrow is the memory of happier days.”
The bag had been given to her first, by old Mrs. Lyon, when that lady had hoped to take her favorite down to old Lyon Hall to the wedding of Alick and Anna. And well Drusilla remembered how much she was pleased with the gift that combined beauty with utility; how much she admired its construction, with its various pockets and recesses for the reception of all sorts of travelling necessaries. But she never went down to that wedding, which never took place, as you already know.
Next, nearly two years afterward, she had packed this very bag for her journey to meet Alick and to be married to him, herself.
And now she was packing it to go and prevent his marriage with his cousin. Truly, the little bag was associated with weddings for good or ill.
While Drusilla was stowing away combs, brushes, soap, cologne, napkins, handkerchiefs, chamber-slippers, etc., into her travelling bag, and reflecting on all its happy and unhappy associations, she was interrupted by the hasty entrance of Pina and Pina’s mammy, both with their eyes wide open in astonishment; for Leo had startled them both with the announcement that his mistress had ordered the carriage quite suddenly to go the city.
“And now, ma’am, what is all this, to be sure?” inquired “mammy,” with the authority, not to say the insolence, belonging even to the best of her sisterhood.