A moment’s pause of surprise, that a child should issue from “old Mr. Smith’s,” and the answer came cheerily back:
“Wish I could; but I’m going sledding.”
“I’ll go with you! I never went a-sledding in all my”—
The sentence was never finished, for somebody jerked her forcibly back within doors just as a great express wagon crawled to a pause before the entrance.
CHAPTER VI.
MEMORIES AND MELODIES.
“My trunk! my trunk! My darling little blue trunk!”
“Massa Joe says for you to go right straight back to the library, missy. He says you done get the pneumony, cuttin’ up that way in the snow, and you not raised in it. He says not to let that boy in here. I—I’s sorry to disoblige any little lady what’s a-visitin’ of us, but”—
“It’s my trunk, Peter. Don’t you hear?”
“Yes, missy. But Lafayette, that’s his business, hauling luggage. I’se the butler, I is.”
Josephine retreated a few paces from the door. She had lived in the open air, but had never felt it pinch her nose as this did. Her feet, also, were cold, and growing wet from the snow which was melting on them. But Peter was attending to that. He was wiping them carefully with his red handkerchief, and Josephine lifted first one, then the other, in silent obedience to his touch. But her interest was wholly in the trunk, which had now been deposited in the vestibule, and from which Lafayette was carefully removing all particles of snow before he carried it up over the carpeted stair.