"Oh, no, sir," said Mrs. Cristie; "that is my maid."
Mr. Tippengray again looked out of the window; then he helped himself to butter, and said:
"Have you ever noticed, Mrs. Petter, that the prevailing style in wild flowers seems to vary every year? It changes just like our fashions, though of course there are always a few old fogies among blossoming weeds, as well as among clothes-wearers."
The next morning Walter Lodloe came to Mrs. Cristie on the lawn.
"I have been waiting for some time," he said, "in order to tell you that I am ready at any moment to repair the unpardonable blunder that I made yesterday, and to escort back to New York the very unsuitable young woman whom I forced upon you."
"Oh, you need not think of doing anything of that kind," said Mrs. Cristie; "the young person is perfectly satisfied with the situation, and intends to stay. She gives me no possible excuse to tell her that she will not suit me, for she takes hold of things exactly as if she remembered what people did for her when she was a baby. She doesn't know everything, but she intends to; that is plain enough. At present she is washing one of baby's frocks with my savon de rose, because she declares that the soap they gave her in the kitchen contains enough lye to corrode the fibers of the fabric."
"Then you think she may suit you?" said Lodloe.
"Oh, she will suit; she intends to suit; and I have nothing to say except that I feel very much as I suppose you would feel if you had a college president to brush your coat."
"My spirits rise," said Lodloe; "I begin to believe that I have not made so much of a blunder after all. When you can get it, there is nothing like blooded service."
"But you do not want too much blood," said Mrs. Cristie. "I wish she had not studied at Bryn Mawr, for I think she pities me for having graduated at Vassar. But still she says I must call her Ida, and that gives me courage."