"Yes, John."
"Good-night, and God bless you!"
There was no time for more; and as distracted Parker burst out of one carriage, and Aunt Maria "came tumbling after," happy John Harris stepped into the other, with a wave of the cocked hat, and drove away in triumph.
CHAPTER VI.
PEACE IS DECLARED.
The age of miracles is not over yet, and our young people wrought several during those three days; for in love's vocabulary there is no such word as fail.
Dolly "stood to her guns" womanfully, and not only chose to go "home," but prepared for her banishment with an outward meekness and an inward joy which made each hour memorable. Aunt Maria had her suspicions and kept a vigilant watch, she and her maid Cobb mounting guard by turns. Parker, finding that "no surrender" was the countersign, raised the siege and retreated in good order, though a trifle demoralized in dignity when he looked back during the evacuation and saw Tip bolt upright in the end window, with the rebel flag proudly displayed.
John meanwhile was circulating briskly through the city, and showing such ardent interest in the approaching Exposition that his mates christened him "Centennial Harris;" while the higher powers felt that they had done a good thing in giving him the job, and increased his salary to make sure of so excellent a servant. Other arrangements of a private but infinitely more interesting nature were successfully made; and he went about smiling to himself, as if the little parcel done up in silver paper, which he was constantly feeling for in his vest pocket, had been a talisman conferring all good gifts upon its happy owner.
When the third night came, he was at his post long before the time, so great was his impatience; for the four-footed traitor had been discovered and ordered into close confinement, where he suffered, not the fate of André, but the pangs of indigestion for lack of exercise after the feast of tidbits surreptitiously administered by one who never forgot all she owed to her "fat friend."