"Oh, that's so funny," giggled Rachel, hopping aimlessly in the center of the big drawing-room and trying to keep time. "Do stop; you put me all out."
"But that is a dancing-tune," said Miss Parrott, jingling away, "and sister and I used to dance quite prettily to it, I remember."
"Well, I can't," said Rachel, hopping wildly, and doing her best to get into step. "Oh, dear!" she brought up suddenly, flushed and panting.
"What is the matter, Rachel?" Miss Parrott let her hands rest on the yellow ivory keys and looked over her shoulder at her.
"Oh, I can't dance," said Rachel, "when you play so funnily. It doesn't go like that; it goes so." She picked up her gown again, and made a sweep off in one direction, and then in another, her feet scarcely touching the pictured roses and lilies with which the velvet carpet was strewn, all the while singing a tune that seemed to carry her off on its own melody. Miss Parrott turned around on the music-stool, and watched her breathlessly.
It was therefore much later than the parsonage people expected when the old brougham set Rachel down at their gate, and she walked into the house, supported on either side by Peletiah and Ezekiel, who had been watching there a full hour for her arrival.
"I like her," she said, marching up to the minister's wife. "She gave me these"—putting her hand on the red coral beads on her neck—"and I'm going back again—to-morrow, I guess."
But it wasn't to stay, that Rachel went back on the morrow; it was only for a day. Despite all the pleadings made by Miss Parrott, and all the desire of the parson and his wife to please their honored parishioner, and most of all, the earnest wish to consent to what would probably be for the child's best good, they held firmly to the first statement, that nothing could be arranged till Mrs. Fisher and Mr. King had been consulted.
"They have sent the child here to us, and here she must stay until they make some other arrangement," they said firmly, and no amount of urging could make them say anything else.
So letters had to fly back and forth from the parsonage and the King estate in the big city, and Miss Parrott wrote long letters in a pinched, lady-like hand in very faint ink, crossing the paper whenever she was afraid she hadn't said enough to plead her cause successfully. Which condition of mind she was in perpetually, all through these writing days. These letters old Mr. King endeavored to read at the first, but he soon threw them down impatiently.