“I suppose so,” said Katie, indifferently. “I never dust the room myself, but mamma says the housemaid complains of all our rooms.”
Mary Ann looked at Katie curiously, then attentively at the picture again; then, rather irrelevantly it would seem to any one not following her thoughts, said with a heavy sigh:
“My, aint you got white hands, though!”
They were white, and Katie enjoyed being told of it; in fact, the admiration she and her belongings, as they were taken from the trunk, excited was very refreshing to this young lady, who had her full share of vanity. Her complacency made her quite tolerant of her companion’s uncouth ways, and she propped herself comfortably against a pillow and proceeded to astonish her auditor by an extended account of her luxuries and privileges in her beautiful home.
Her descriptions were assisted and confirmed by two photographs that were too large to go in the album. The views showed the house to be very elegant, but the girls were rather tired of Katie’s “bragging,” and it was seldom she could get an opportunity of expending so much eloquence upon her favorite theme.
While Mary Ann listened with entranced interest to the description of home-life which seemed to her like a piece out of a fairy-tale her rough, red hands were not idle. Having emptied the trunk of all excepting its heaviest contents she dragged it into the hall for Duffy to carry into the store-room, and, pulling a spool and tatting-shuttle out of her pocket, made the latter fly as if its motor were steam.
By and by Lily put her head in the half-closed door, flushing at the sight of Miss Stubbs, but otherwise taking no notice of her.
“Please come to Mrs. Abbott’s room, Katie; she wants us for a few minutes,” she said, disappearing as suddenly as she came.
Katie smoothed her hair at the glass and turned to obey the request. At the same instant small flying feet were heard and a little voice counting the doors, “One, two, three, four, five, same’s my little finger; this is the one, I know;” and with a little knock that she didn’t wait to hear answered Ethel danced into the room.
“I’ve come back for you,” she exclaimed, running up to Mary Ann, “and Mrs. Abbott says you may come with us to see the peacocks, and we are going to feed them, too. Candace is getting your hat, and she’ll wait on the piazza for us. Come, hurry! hurry! The big one’s got his tail lifted all up like a big, big feather fan.”