CHAPTER IX.—THE SURPRISE.
It was seven o’clock and they were all dressed and waiting for the surprise. For some reason they had had an idea it might come walking on two legs up the street or else riding in a hansom cab, and the four young girls had stepped onto the balcony outside their window. An occasional passer-by in that quiet quarter looked up with admiration at those four bright, eager faces watching each newcomer below. Their dainty muslin frocks gleamed softly white against the pink brick walls of the old house. Miss Campbell in a beautiful blue marquisette stood just inside the window with a mysterious little smile on her face.
The young girls did not hear the light tap on the door nor notice that she had turned to open it.
“Come in,” she whispered. “I haven’t told them yet, although it was really very hard to resist their pleadings.”
A woman tiptoed into the room. She was tall and dark and very beautiful, so beautiful that Miss Campbell blinked her eyes for a moment as if she had been looking at the sun. The visitor’s arms were filled with flowers.
“I have brought you each a bouquet,” she whispered. “I remembered, Miss Campbell, that you always loved forget-me-nots, and they will just match your dress to-night. Will you wear these for me?”
Miss Campbell’s exclamation of pleasure drew the attention of the watchers on the balcony to the visitor. They peeped shyly in through the window. Here was the surprise at last! A vision in a beautiful white dress, her arms filled with violets and roses! But who was she?
“Have you really forgotten me?” she cried, putting the flowers on the table and stretching out her hands.
They waited for one brief, embarrassed moment. Then Nancy cried joyfully, “Mrs. Cortinas!”
“Not ‘Mrs.’—‘Maria,’” corrected the beautiful young woman. “Maria Ruggles Cortinas. Now, do you know?”