“My cousin Jessica! I bid you welcome. Studying my wonderful old carpet, I see. Your mother did that before you, child, and many another Waldron besides her. Mr. Hale, I am happy to meet you. Be seated, please. This other gentleman——”
“Ephraim Marsh, at your sarvice, Ma’am. I belong to Miss Trent. I’m from Sobrante with her, Ma’am.”
Mr. Hale waited with much interest for what might follow this statement, but was unprepared for the gracious suavity of Madam Dalrymple, of whose temper he had heard much. With a kindly, if patronizing, smile she waved Ephraim aside, directing her own old servitor to:
“Take Marsh below, Tipkins, and see that he has refreshments.”
Evidently, the Madam had accepted the sharpshooter as a correct feature of the situation, considering that it was the mark of a gentlewoman to be well attended; and as the two old men left the room he wondered how “Forty-niner” himself would relish being classed with the servants “below stairs.” However, Ephraim cared not one whit for that. He had attained his ambition. He had come east to share in educating his “little Captain” and he was now assigned to a home in the same house with her. “Hooray!” was his thought; and, further, that as soon as one other small matter was settled he would sit him down and write a letter to the other “boys” that would make them stare.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Dalrymple sank gracefully into a deep chair, displaying no sign of the intense pain each movement cost her and physically unable to stand for a moment longer. Thence she held out a thin white hand toward the girl who had not yet risen from the floor, nor left off staring at the lady before her—so wholly different from the picture she had formed of the “stern old woman” with whom she was to live.
Now blushing at her own rudeness, which she was sure the other had observed, she rose and came slowly forward and took the extended hand. Poor hand! So white, yet with such cruelly gnarled and swollen joints! There was no kiss proffered from either side; even impulsive Jessica feeling that she would no more dare touch that person in the arm-chair than she would a bit of the most delicate, and forbidden, porcelain.
“Thank you for welcoming me, Cousin Margaret; if I am to call you that?” said “Lady Jess,” all the wonder and admiration she felt showing in her face.
“Certainly, my dear. We are second-cousins twice removed.”
“Then, Cousin Margaret, my mother sends you her dear love and great respect; and I am to obey you in all things—all things that I can; and I am to do for you whatever you will let me.”