"Such walking, Phyl! But I had to come. I have sat over my embroidery without a breath of air for five days, and I was nearly wild. Is it a party?" added Ruth, stopping suddenly as she caught a glimpse of the parlor.
"It is rather a good imitation of one for such weather," laughed Phyllis. "My friends from Boston, who, I told you, were to be in New York this winter, are come, and Tom is here; that is all. Here are Jessamy and auntie. I'm going to make myself presentable now; you go in with them."
"Your friends have consented to stay to tea, Phyllis; and Ruth will stay all night," said Mrs. Wyndham, as Phyllis came back, looking sweet and fresh in her gray crepon. "We are going to have a real stormy-night good time, though I've no idea of what we shall find for supper."
"Supper does not matter," said David Campbell, crossing to Phyllis's side. "I have been waiting to show you a bit of pebble my sister sent over to me. I asked her if she would let me have it for you. It came from the bank of Loch Leven."
"Oh, that was ever so kind of you!" cried Phyllis, gratefully, really pleased with the thought for her the lame lad showed. "I always loved poor Mary Stuart; I hope you don't think her bad?"
"Bad!" echoed David, with the emphasis of a Scotsman. "Her conduct may have been somewhat erroneous, but she was brought up in an evil court, and was but a young bit lassie when she came to her own, and too beautiful to be left to wicked counselors. But bad! She was never that, you know."
"I am sure she wasn't, for I always was too sorry for her not to judge her partially; I shall prize this little stone, thinking her weary feet may have trodden it," said Phyllis.
"That's not, so to say, possible," said honest Davy; "for most like the pebbles that were on the surface three hun'er years ago are buried now. It's juist a memento, no mair."
"Ah, well; it will do no harm to dream about it," said Phyllis. "I shall want you to tell me all your plans after supper. Now we must all go to work. Alan, you are to make the coffee as you did on the yacht."
"I had an aunt," Ruth was saying to Alan at that moment, and Alan did not hear Phyllis as she spoke—"I had an aunt who married an Armstrong. That is, she was my mother's sister-in-law; her husband was Fordyce Armstrong, and he lived in Boston."