CHAPTER XXIII.
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.
“All things, friendship excepted,
Are subject to fortune.”—Lilly.
The hands on the dial-plate of the clock pointed to quarter-past ten as Hetty’s nimble fingers set the last stitch in the gown and Floy drew on her gloves, having already donned hat and cloak in obedience to orders.
“Done!” cried Hetty, putting her needle in the cushion and her thimble into her pocket. “Now, John, make way with these few basting threads while I put on my duds, there’s a good soul!”
John—a well-grown lad of seventeen, in looks a happy mixture of father and mother, in character an improvement upon both, having his mother’s energy without her hardness and closeness—laid down the paper he had been reading, and with the smiling rejoinder, “Pretty work to set a man at, Het!” was about to comply with her request when Mary, coming in from her mistress’s bedroom, her hands full of packages, interposed:
“Oh, never mind them! I’ll have them all out in the morning before the Madame’s up. Here, Miss Goodenough, Miss Kemper, and Mr. John, she charged me to give you each one of these. They’re boxes of fine candies. She always lays in a great store of them about Christmas.”
“Ah, ha!” cried John as the street-door closed on him and his companions, “won’t I have the laugh on Lu to-night, Het? He’d never have let me be your gallant if he’d thought there was a box of candy to be won by it.”