“They look good, don’t they?” said Fidelia.
“Y-es,” said the doctor, with a shrug. “The question is, are they wholesome?”
“Oh, yes; they are the best of their kind! If they are used in moderation, they won’t hurt anybody,” said cousin Abby. “Miss Fidelia must be a good scholar if she studies as well as she works.”
“Do you?” said the doctor. “Well, never mind. The work has done you good; and I hope Abby will take you in hand and find you more to do another day.”
The work had really done Fidelia good. She folded her apron, and turned to her favourite seat in the south porch with a lighter heart than she had had for a long time. But her spirits fell again as she reached the door.
“The company” had arrived—“and a great deal of it,” Fidelia thought, at the first glimpse of the flowing garments of a group of ladies who had just alighted from a carriage, and were lingering on the lawn. She glanced down at her faded alpaca, which had been her second-best dress during the whole of the school year, and wished herself at home.
She was hot and tired after her work; and when she heard Nellie Austin’s voice calling her name, she made haste to get upstairs before she should be seen. But she could not resist the temptation to turn into cousin Abby’s room, from the window of which she could get another glimpse of the strangers.
They were not all strangers. By the side of one of the ladies, carrying her parasol and shawl, walked Dr Justin Everett. But it was a different Dr Justin from him who had sat constrained and silent at his brother’s table that first night, and who had responded so gravely the next day to Deacon Ainsworth’s untimely congratulations and questions. His high head was bowed as he listened, and he responded with smiles to his companion.
Then Nellie’s voice was heard again, calling,—“Faithful, my Faithful, where are you?” and what Fidelia would have liked to do would have been to hide in cousin Abby’s closet, or to run down the back stairs and take refuge in the kitchen again. She did not do either. She laid herself down on cousin Abby’s sofa, and shaded her face with a big feather fan that lay at hand. Nellie entered the room on tiptoe.
“Are you asleep, Fie? Are you sick?” said she softly.