“Toast and tea, Jack, my boy; you and I know how to make ’em,” she went on, throwing off cloak and hat, and producing the requisite articles from a closet beside the chimney.
“I’ve already had three good meals to-day,” observed Floy, smiling slightly.
“What of that? four or five hours of hard work since the last, beside a brisk walk and a ride through the cold, ought to have made you ready for another,” returned Hetty, giving John the toaster and a slice of bread, then putting on the tea to draw.
“Have you nothing for me to do?” asked Floy.
“Yes; warm yourself thoroughly. Ah, what a good forgettery I have of my own! Here’s something else to employ you. A bit of Christmas in it, I suspect,” she ran on, taking a letter from the mantel and putting it into Floy’s hand.
A flush of pleasure came into the young girl’s cheek as she recognized in the address the writing of her old friend Miss Wells, but faded again instantly, leaving it paler than before.
What news did this missive bring? would it tell her of Espy, and that sorrow and bereavement had befallen him?
She broke the seal with a trembling hand. Ah, if she were only alone!
But Hetty and John, busy with their culinary labors, might have been unconscious of her existence for all the notice they seemed to be taking of her movements.