She entered Mrs. Darling's room with no affectation of soft-stepping, threw up the window—the sharp outer air cut into the scented warmth like a silver axe—and began pushing things briskly into their places. She digressed from her labors a moment to get from the closet a black moiré, which she examined, then replaced.
Now came a rap at the door, and a voice only a shade less respectful than before, saying, "Miss Pittock is waiting below, ma'am."
"Very well, I will be down directly," said Mrs. Bonnet. "Come here, Jetty!"
Jetty, instead of coming, ran round and round among the chair legs, waving his tail in a graceful circle, eluding Mrs. Bonnet's hand not by swiftness, but craft.
"Come here, you little fool," muttered Bonnet; and as her bidding, however severe, availed nothing, she cast Mrs. Darling's wrapper over the little beast, and got him entangled like a black-and-tan butterfly in a pocket-handkerchief. She snatched him up squirming a little, tucked him tightly under her arm, and ran up-stairs to her own chamber on the third floor. There she dropped him; and when she had donned her black coat and bonnet, gloves and galoshes, during which preparations Jetty was leaping and yapping like crazy, in the supposition again that they were going for a walk together, she turned out the light and shut the door against his wet, black nose. His reproachful barks followed her down the passage. "It's good for 'is lungs," she said, grimly, hurrying over the stairs.
"AT LAST THEY WERE GONE"
And here at the foot was Miss Pittock, looking quite more than the lady in her mistress's last year's cape.
"I hope I haven't kept you waiting, Miss Pittock."
"Quite the contrary; don't mention it, Mrs. Bonnet. Oh, the shops is a sight to behold, Mrs. Bonnet! I never seen anything like this year. It do seem as if people made more to-do than they used about Christmas, don't it? Are we ready, Mrs. Bonnet?"