"Ye—yes, ma'am," he stammered.
"And this is the way you serve me. Well, as I said before, if I have any more trouble with you, back you go to the poorhouse," and, loftily holding up her head, she swaggered from the room.
"And you, too, Prosperity," she exclaimed, pausing in the hall to reprove the second grayhead, who was openly chuckling over his companion's discomfiture. "Your dusting lately is shameful; just look at this chair," and she ran her forefinger over the back of one standing near her. "Go get a cloth."
The old man, with a ludicrous descent from gratification to mortification, fairly ran down the hall, while Miss Gastonguay preceded the clergyman into a music-room, where she seated herself on a piano stool and motioned him to a monk's bench.
"I shall not detain you," he said, "I see you are going out."
"No hurry," she replied, airily. "I am just going to try a new colt in the field yonder,—you want money, I suppose."
"Not this time," he replied, in his smooth, polished tones. "I want to ask a favour of another order."
"What is it?" she said, abruptly.
"Have you heard of Justin Mercer's marriage?"
"Good gracious, yes,—is this place so large that we should miss an important piece of gossip like that? The whole town is ringing with it."