“Is this Miss Standish?” asked the servant. “I was sent for you and Miss Biddy.”
The haughty nose of the coachman turned up slightly as he said this, and Nellie noticed it, and she vowed inwardly that the man’s place should be filled by another more worthy before long. Already the determined Nellie had taken the reins in her own hands.
“I must take my cat,” said she at the last minute, and when Biddy demurred, saying that the man driving the carriage might not be pleased with a cat in the beautiful carriage, she broke out and said:
“Then let him lump it if he don’t like it. I’ll take my cat if I want to and not ask my servant.”
“Oh, Nellie,” gasped Biddy, “don’t call that lovely man a servant. He really looks so handsome and dignified.”
“He won’t long if I sic Tabby on him. Would you like to see her scratch at that wool?”
“Hush, Nellie,” begged Biddy; “there, come now, and we’ll climb in.”
The old boathouse was closed until Biddy should have a chance to rent it, and she turned the key in the lock with a sigh, as for years she had made this place her home.
The carriage bowled gently down through the streets, and Helen Standish tripped up the steps from which, when a child, she and her mother were turned away, but the beautiful girl now going to take up her own, remembered nothing of the starvation her poor little mother had gone through with. All of her days had been spent in bliss and happiness, with this same old Irishwoman sitting sedately beside her, with the Tabby in her arms.
“I am here to greet you,” said George Benson as he led the girl into her future home. “I am so pleased that you are where you belong.”