“I don’t doubt it,” replied the girl, with a shade of petulance; “but it will be so awkward, a stranger at the house!”
“I wish you would close the veranda door, Roderigue,” said a querulous voice from inside. “You are letting in all the heat.”
The occupant of the room came forward, a little yellow lady, with red ringlets, in a red wrapper. This was Miss Mopius, the Dominé’s sister-in-law, and an invalid.
“I had kept down the temperature so beautifully,” she complained, during the performance of the usual perfunctory pecks. “What’s the use of my scolding the servant if she sees that you don’t care? Look at the thermometer, Ursula; it was under 65°.”
Ursula obediently reported that it was now nearing 67°.
“You see,” said Miss Mopius. She said nothing else, but the words dragged down upon the little room a fearful weight of guilty silence, from which Ursula fled to wash her hands.
As the girl was coming down-stairs again, she heard the rumble of returning wheels. She could not resist a swift run to the veranda, where she had abandoned her basket. As she caught it up the dog-cart came flying past. The two brothers were in it now. The elder turned sideways, started, hesitated, took off his hat. Ursula remained watching them, a symphony in yellow and brown, with the marigolds at her feet in a lake of golden orange, and the pink-tipped honeysuckle all around her, against the staring sunflowers loud and bold.