"Very likely you'll hear Tom preach when you go to New Bedford," rejoined Flora, "for he is a Methodist minister now; and Chloe, they say, is powerful in prayer at the meetings. I often smile when I think about the manner of her coming away. It was so funny that my quiet, refined Mamita Lila should all at once become a kidnapper. But here is Rosen Blumen. Well, what now, Mignonne?"
"Papa says Lila is very sleepy, and we ought to be going home," replied the young damsel.
"Then we will kiss good night, sistita mia?" said Mrs. Blumenthal; "and you will bring Eulalia to us to-morrow."
On their return home, Mr. Bright called to them over the garden fence. "I've just had a letter from your neighbor, Mrs. Fitzgerald," said he. "She wants to know whether we can accommodate her, and her father, and her son with lodgings this summer. I'm mighty glad we can say we've let all our rooms; for that old Mr. Bell treats mechanics as if he thought they all had the small-pox, and he was afraid o' catching it. So different from you, Mr. Blumenthal, and Mr. King! You ain't afraid to take hold of a rough hand without a glove on. How is Mrs. King? Hope she's coming to-morrow. If the thrushes and bobolinks could sing human music, and put human feeling into it, her voice would beat 'em all. How romantic that you should come here to Joe Bright's to find your sister, that you thought was dead."
When they had courteously answered his inquiries, he repeated a wish he had often expressed, that somebody would write a story about it. If he had been aware of all their antecedents, he would perhaps have written one himself; but he only knew that the handsome sisters were orphans, separated in youth, and led by a singular combination of circumstances to suppose each other dead.
CHAPTER XXIX.
When the sisters were alone together, the next day after dinner,
Flora said, "Rosa, dear, does it pain you very much to hear about Mr.
Fitzgerald?"
"No; that wound has healed," she replied. "It is merely a sad memory now."
"Mrs. Bright was nursery governess in his family before her marriage," rejoined Flora. "I suppose you have heard that he disappeared mysteriously. I think she may know something about it, and I have been intending to ask her; but your sudden appearance, and the quantity of things we have had to say to each other, have driven it out of my head. Do you object to my asking her to come in and tell us something about her experiences?"
"I should be unwilling to have her know we were ever acquainted with
Mr. Fitzgerald," responded Mrs. King.