“Friend of yours, Sun Maid? Glad to see her.”
“Glad to see me, be you? Wait till Abel Smith comes an’ identifies you. Then see which side the laugh’s on, you—you——”
“Osceolo is my name, ma’am.”
Foreseeing difficulties, the girl guided her guest into the kitchen, where Wahneenah was preparing dinner, and where the Indian woman greeted her old acquaintance with no surprise and, certainly, without any of the effusiveness that, for once, rather marked Mercy’s manner toward her former “hired girl.”
“Well, it’s a real likely house, now, ain’t it? I’d admire to see the minister. It’s years since I saw one. Is he about?”
Kitty answered:
“Yes. He is studying. I rather hate to disturb him; but at dinner you will meet him.”
“Studying! Studying what? Why, I thought he was an old man.”
“He is. So old, I sometimes fear we will not have him with us long.”