"It can't surely be time for you to go, Rachel."
Then she did a thing she could not remember doing in all her life, she deliberately went on with her employment, allowing Simmons to wait on his carriage box, while she broke up the system of years that always made her punctual to a minute.
"You may sing that over again, Rachel," she said, beginning on the strains of the opera that Rachel had gathered from the barrel-organ on the street corners.
"Then may I dance again?" begged Rachel. "Please—just once before I go."
"Yes," said Miss Parrott, sitting very straight, and giving all the graceful little quirks to the slender fingers which her music-master, long since dead and buried, had taught her. "Now begin, child."
So up and down, high and clear, rang Rachel's voice, with no more effort than the birds outside put forth, the sound penetrating the ancient walls, and paralyzing every domestic, while it nearly made Simmons, outside, fall from his box.
"She hain't touched that pianner in ten years," said the cook, in a hushed voice. "Oh, me! I'm afraid she's going to die," and she flung her apron over her head.
"Die!" exclaimed Hooper, finding his voice. "She won't die with that young one here," he added, in scorn.
"Now may I dance?" pleaded Rachel, plucking Miss Parrott's sleeve. "Do let me; you said I might."
"Yes," said Miss Parrott, wrenching herself away from the operatic strains, to begin on a little old-fashioned jig.