‘Here, Pietro; call some one to take the horses.’
‘Is this the way you welcome guests? I shall never——’
‘Dinner’s been waiting half an hour. We were beginning to think——’
‘I’ve been worried to death! You haven’t caught cold, have you?’
‘No, Aunt Katherine,’ she laughed as she pulled off her gloves and shook hands with the visitors. ‘But we’ve been nearly drowned! We should have been wholly drowned if Mr. Sybert hadn’t spied a very leaky ark on the top of a hill.’
‘I’m relieved!’ sighed her uncle as they passed into the hall. ‘I was beginning to fear that you had had a disagreement on the way, and that it was another case of the Kilkenny cats.’
‘Marcia, how you look! You’re covered with mud!’ cried Mrs. Copley.
With a slightly apprehensive glance toward the mirror, Marcia straightened her hat and rubbed a daub of mud from her cheek. ‘Kentucky Lil and Triumvirate were in too much of a hurry to get home to turn out for puddles,’ she said. ‘How much time may we have to dress, Aunt Katherine?’
‘Just fifteen minutes,’ returned her uncle; ‘and that is a quarter of an hour more than you deserve. If you are not down then, we shall eat without waiting for you.’
‘Fifteen minutes, remember!’ cried Marcia to Sybert as they parted at the top of the stairs. ‘I’ll race with you,’ she added; ‘though I think myself that a girl ought to have a handicap.’