"Send Martha to her, quick!" said Hildegarde, in an imperative whisper. "Fly, Bubble! the back door!"
Bubble flew, as if he had been shot from a gun, and returned, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, to find his sister in tears, and his adored Miss Hilda pacing up and down the piazza with hasty and agitated steps.
"What is it?" he cried in dismay. "What did I do? What is the matter with everybody? Why, I never—"
Hildegarde quieted him with a gesture, and then told him, briefly, the story of the house in the wood. Poor Bubble was quite overcome. He punched his head severely, and declared that he was the most stupid idiot that ever lived.
"I'd better go away!" he cried. "I can't see the old lady again. As kind as she's been to me, and then for me to call her a—I guess I'll be going, Miss Hilda; I'm no good here, and only doing harm."
"Be quiet, Bubble!" said Hildegarde, smiling in the midst of her distress. "You shall do nothing of the kind. And, Rose, you are not to shed another tear. Who knows? This may be the very best thing that could have happened. Of course I wouldn't have had you say it, Bubble, just in that way; but now that it is said, I—I think I am glad of it. I should not wonder—I really do hope that it may have been just the word that was wanted."
And so it proved. For an hour after, as the three still sat on the piazza,—two of them utterly disconsolate, the third trying to cheer them with the hope that she was feeling more and more strongly,—Martha appeared. There were traces of tears in her friendly gray eyes, but she looked kindly at the forlorn trio.
"Miss Bond is not feeling very well!" she said. "She is lying down, and thinks she will not come downstairs this evening. Here is a note for you, Miss Hilda, and a letter for the post."
Hildegarde tore open the little folded note, and read, in Miss Wealthy's pretty, regular hand, these words:—
My dear Hilda,—Please tell the boy that I do not mean to be an old hunks, and ask him to post this letter. We will make our arrangements to-morrow, as I am rather tired now.