"Well, I should say so!" cried the good woman. "She's out in the carriage, you say? I'll go right out and fetch her in."
Rose was warmly welcomed, and brought into the house; while Hilda fastened Dr. Abernethy to the gate-post, and got the shawls and hand-bags out from under the seat.
"I expect you'd like to go right upstairs and lay off your things!" was Mrs. Brett's next remark. "I declare! I do wish 't I'd known! I swep' the spare chamber yesterday, but I hadn't any idea of its being used. Well, there! you'll have to take me as I am." She bustled upstairs before the girls, talking all the way. "I try to keep the house clean, but I don't often have comp'ny, and the dust doos gather so, this dry weather, and not keeping any help, you see—well, there! this is the best I've got, and maybe it'll do to sleep in."
She threw open, with mingled pride and nervousness, the door of a pleasant, sunny room, rather bare, but in exquisite order. The rag carpet was brilliant with scarlet, blue, and green; the furniture showed no smallest speck of dust; the bed looked like a snowdrift. Nevertheless, the good hostess went peering about, wiping the chairs with her apron, and repeating, "The dust doos gather so! I wouldn't set down, if I was you, till I've got the chairs done off!"
"Why, Mrs. Brett," cried Hildegarde, laughing merrily, "it is the chairs you should be anxious for, not ourselves. We are simply covered with dust, from head to foot. I think it must be an inch deep on my hat!" she continued, taking off her round "sailor" and looking at it with pretended alarm. "I don't dare to put it down in this clean room."
"Oh, that's all right!" cried the widow, beaming. "Land sakes! I don't care how much dust you bring in, but I should be lawth to have you get any on you here. Well, there! now you need a proper good rest, I'm sure, both of you. Wouldn't you like a cup o' tea now?"
"'NOT A THING IN THE HOUSE!'"
Both girls declined the tea, and declared that an hour's rest was all they needed; so the good woman bade them "rest good!" and hurried downstairs, to fling herself into a Berserker fit of cooking. "Not a thing in the house!" she soliloquized, as she sifted flour and beat eggs with the energy of desperation, "except cookies and doughnuts; and Marthy always has everything so nice, let alone what they're used to at home. I'll make up a sheet of sponge-cake, I guess, first, and while it's baking I can whip up some chocolate frosting and mix a pan of biscuit. Le' me see! I might make a jelly-roll, while I'm about it, for there's some of Marthy's own currant jelly that she sent me last fall. They'd ought to have some hearty victuals for supper, I suppose; but I declare,"—she paused, with the egg-beater in her hand,—"stuffed aigs'll have to do to-night, I guess!" she concluded with a sigh. "There isn't time to get a chicken ready. Well, there! If I'd ha' known! but they'll have to take me as I am. I might give 'em some fritters, though, to eat with maple surrup, just for a relish."
While these formidable preparations were going on against their peace of body, the two girls were enjoying an hour of perfect rest, each after her own manner. Rose was curled up on the bed, in a delicious doze which was fast deepening into sound sleep. Hildegarde sat in a low chair with a book in her hand, and looked out of the window. She could always rest better with a book, even if she did not read it; and the very touch of this little worn morocco volume—it was the "Golden Treasury"—was a pleasure to her. She looked out dreamily over the pleasant green fields and strips of woodland; for the house stood at the very end of the little village, and the country was before and around it. Under the window lay the back yard, with a white lilac-tree in blossom, and a well with a long sweep. Such a pleasant place it looked! A low stone-wall shut it in, the stones all covered with moss and gay red and yellow lichens. Beside the white lilac, there was a great elm and a yellow birch. In the latter was an oriole's nest; and presently Hildegarde heard the bird's clear golden note, and saw his bright wings flash by. "I like this place!" she said, settling herself comfortably in the flag-bottomed chair. She dropped her eyes to the book in her lap and read,—