“Oh, Miss Sibby!”
“Well, then, I do! I hain’t no patience with neither party! A cutting and a slashing at each other like Injuns! Only last week a lot of Blue Bottles come riding up and searched the house after a spy—as if I would harbor a spy!—and after eating up and drinking up everything in the house, and putting me in fear of my life, they mounted and rode away, telling me ‘to take care of myself’! ‘Take care of myself,’ indeed; after scaring me almost to death.”
“Oh, Miss Sibby! I am afraid you are no——”
Whatever he was going to say was cut short by the sudden opening of the door, and the reëntrance of Odalite Force, escorting Mrs. Hedge and Miss Grandiere.
“You here, Miss Sibby?” exclaimed the three ladies, in a breath.
“What the Blue Bottles and the Gray Backs has left of me is here, as you see,” replied Miss Bayard, rising to receive the welcome of the new arrivals.
“And now, Sam, my boy, we will go out hunting lodgings; and if we can’t find them in the city we will even go a little way into the country,” said the old skipper, as he arose and bowed himself out of the room, followed by his nephew.
When they had gone, Lord Enderby, who had been left out of the talk, now fancied himself out of place. So he likewise arose and bowed himself out.
When the half dozen women were left in the parlor, they drew their chairs together and fell into a confidential talk.
Miss Sibby inquired more particularly into the nature of Mrs. Force’s illness; and Wynnette, with her brusque frankness, told the truth—that the shock of hearing of Roland Bayard’s arrest and imprisonment, under the charge of piracy, had made the lady ill.