"No," said Mrs. Henderson. "Now be a good girl"—all her fears returning as she saw Rachel's face.
Simmons starting up the horses, that, although an old pair, yet liked to set off with a flourish, the movement bounced Rachel violently against the back of her seat and knocked her bonnet over her face. This gave her something to think of, and changed her terror to a deep displeasure. When the drive was ended, therefore, and the brougham, after its progress through an avenue of fine old trees, was brought to a standstill before the ancestral mansion where Miss Parrott's father and grandfather had lived before her, the visitor was in no condition to enjoy the pleasures thrust upon her.
Miss Parrott, in the stiff, black silk gown that she had worn the day when she called at the parsonage, met her on the big stone steps. She put out a hand in a long, black lace mitt, "I am very glad to see you, child," she said, in old-time hospitality.
But no hospitality, old-time or any other, had a pleasant effect on Rachel. She gave a glance up and around the big, gloomy gray, stone house, with a wild thought of rushing down the avenue and home to the parsonage.
"It is a pleasant place, isn't it?" observed Miss Parrott with complacent memory of always living in the grandest homestead for several counties.
"No, ma'am," said Rachel promptly.
Miss Parrott started, and gave a little gasp. Then, reflecting it was not in accordance with fine manners to notice any such slip on the part of guests, she led the way into the mansion. Simmons, much shocked, actually forgot himself so far as to scratch his head, as he drove off to the stables, and he didn't get over it all day.
"Perhaps you would like a little refreshment," suggested Miss Parrott, when, the child's bonnet off, she was seated on the edge of a stiff, high-backed chair. She couldn't think of anything else to say, and as she usually offered it to her friends at the end of their long drives when they called upon her, it seemed a happy thing to do now, especially as Rachel's black eyes were fastened upon her in a manner extremely uncomfortable for the person gazed at.
As Rachel didn't know in the least what "refreshment" meant, she stared on, without a word. And Miss Parrott, pulling with more vigor than was her wont, a long red worsted cord that hung down by the piano, a stately butler made his appearance quicker than usual, took his directions from his mistress, and after regarding the small figure perched on one of the ancestral Parrott chairs with extreme disfavor, he silently withdrew.
Presently, in he came, his head well thrown back, and bearing a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at all, he departed.