"How well you're looking, Sarepta! I declare I think I must come in and make you a little visit, he! he!"
She tried to push the door, wider, but it was held in an iron grip; Sarepta, apparently, had not heard her remark.
"Ahem!" Mrs. Sharpe tried a new tack. "Expecting visitors, are you, Sarepta?"
"Not as I know of!"
"Oh, I understand! a visitor, I should have said. It's always well to be exact. Well, all I called for was to say, if you wanted to borrow anything, silver or the like of that, I hope you'll come to me, Sarepta. Mr. Sharpe was part English, you know; his grandfather came from the Provinces, and of course I'm acquainted with English ways. Perhaps I'd better come in and talk it over——"
"Excuse me! My bread is in the oven!" said Sarepta Darwin.
The door closed on a shriek.
"I scrouged her toe good!" Sarepta told Madam Flynt that night. "She bellered right out, and I was glad."
Perhaps the most complete summing up of the situation was given that evening by Miss Almeria Bygood as she sat with her sister over nine o'clock supper, that pleasant meal that still lingers in blessed Cyrus, where we dine at half-past twelve and sup at five or six. Molly had brought in the tray and drawn up the little round table between the two ladies as they sat with their feet on the embroidered fender-stool. (There was no fire, but they always sat there in the evening.) Pretty Molly, crisp and trim in her light print dress! Miss Bygoods did not hold with putting maids in black, especially young maids. "Why should they be made to ape the semblance of sorrow?" Miss Almeria asked with dignity. "We trust our service is not so arduous as to cause them the reality!"
They were talking of the duke, of course, over their cocoa and sponge drops: who, save Kitty and John Tucker, talked of anything else in this week of the Tribulations of Cyrus? They wondered, hoped, feared, wondered again. Would they lose their Kitty, the rose and jewel of their little world? Would this great nobleman carry her off, if not on his horse (Miss Egeria knew nothing of strong men from the north!) at least in his coach and six? Thus Miss Egeria, trembling, romantic.