CHAPTER XXIX.
REUNITED.
Miss Scrimp was in her dining-room, looking to the lay-out of the table for the boarders when they came to supper, which would be in an hour or thereabout.
Little Jessie, ever neat as far as she could be in her person, now looked really pretty, for her new eight-cent calico dress, though bought at a slop-shop, fitted her slight and childish form perfectly, and she had combed out her dark curling hair until it looked like flosses of raven silk. The very pallor of her little face made her dark, mournful eyes more beautiful.
The girl was setting the table, assisted a little now and then by Biddy Lanigan, who cut the bread and meat, and Miss Scrimp was superintending it all, when she heard a carriage rattle up to the door, and a moment later heard the door-bell ring.
Miss Scrimp had not yet changed her dress for evening, or put on her false curls. She thought Mr. W—— might be in that carriage, as he had been before when a carriage stopped with Hattie, and to be seen by him, without her curls, would never do.
So she said to Jessie:
“Run to the door, and see who is there, while I run up stairs and change my dress. If it is anybody to see me, ask ’em right into the parlor and light the gas there, for ’twill soon be dark enough to need it, and I look my best in gas-light.”
Jessie opened the door, and a glad cry broke from her lips when she saw Hattie standing there, and though two ladies and an elderly gentleman stood on the steps also, she paid no heed to them, but cried out:
“Oh, dear, good Miss Hattie, is it you? See my new dress. It is the first I have had in such a long, long time. If any one wants to see Miss Scrimp, I’m to take ’em right into the parlor and light up the gas. She has gone up stairs to fix up.”
“We’ll go into the parlor, dear; there are those with me who wish to see Miss Scrimp, and you, too. Run and light the gas.”