“Well, I only wish it would be in a hurry about it. But come, dear, I saw Mr. W——, bless his heart, when I came in, and he said he had already told you to take time to come to our house whenever you wanted to. And, dear little Jessie, with dressmakers and milliners all around her, happier than anything else alive, only asks for her dear Miss Hattie to come. She has told us how you fed her when almost starved, and how you gave her clothes when she was in rags, and her mother says she’ll pay you in love if she can do nothing else.”
“The love of true friends is very precious,” said Hattie.
“And we are your true friends, and we will be always,” said Lizzie, earnestly. “But come, dear Hattie, they will wait for us. Frank is out in the carriage. He would come along; but when he got here, the lazy fellow wanted to stay in the carriage instead of coming up. He said Mr. W—— was laughing at him for something that happened last night at the club-room, but will not tell me what.”
“Most likely your brother was boasting over his new cousin,” said Hattie, putting on her things to go.
“Yes, he did tell him about her.”
The two girls now went out, and in a few moments were in the carriage, and on their way up town. They stopped but once, then it was by order of Frank, who went into a florist’s to get four large bouquets for those in the carriage and at home.
“Oh, my Hattie! my Hattie!” cried Jessie Albemarle, when our heroine went into the sitting-room, where, with her mother, and surrounded by busy cutters and sewers, she was being made presentable.
And she showered kisses on the only true friend she had known in her many days of sorrow.
As lunch had been kept waiting for the arrival of the carriage and its occupants, the family, as Mr. Legare jovially termed them all, so as to include Hattie, left the sewers and their work, and adjourned to the dining-room.
Jessie, who seemed to come naturally into the ways of a lady, was almost too happy to eat, but Cousin Frank told her she would never grow large, stately, and beautiful like Miss Butler unless she ate heartily.