Then the flustered woman hurried away. When the two men were in the library, Mr. Green excused himself, saying that he had an engagement with his banker, but that he would see their visitor at luncheon. Then he, too, departed, leaving Mr. Dearman alone.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Green had hastened to her daughter’s room. It was in perfect order, and Susetta, curled in a chair, was reading a book. The orphan was not there.
“Wherever is Eva Dearman?” Mrs. Green asked in such an excited tone of voice that Susetta looked up in surprise and inquired, “What’s wrong, ma?”
“Wrong? Everything’s wrong!” her mother replied. “Here we’ve been treating that orphan like a servant, and her uncle has just come for her, and he’s richer than your own pa even, and what would he say if he knew how we’d been treating the girl? But he mustn’t know! Susetta, find Eva at once and dress her up in some of your fine clothes and tell her that we didn’t intend to have her for a servant any longer. Tell her I was a-going to adopt her and have her for your sister.”
Then it was that something in Susetta which was like her blunt, honest father, awoke, and her eyes flashed as she replied,
“I won’t tell Eva any such thing, ma, because it’s a lie.”
The mother cowed before her daughter’s reproof, and then hurried down the hall to see if Eva was in her room, but she was not there. The girl had gone down-stairs to replace the cleaning utensils in the kitchen-closet. She was about to return to her room when the parlor-maid appeared with a vase of flowers.
“Oh, Eva,” she said, “won’t you please take these into the library? I have so much to do, I will never get through.”
Eva, always willing to oblige, took the cut-glass vase with its bouquet of sweet pink roses and went toward the library, little dreaming that her very own uncle was waiting in there.
The girl had one hand on the silk plush portières, and was about to push them back, when she heard her name called softly from above.