The motion was repeated; the head of a mouse peeped out and was quickly withdrawn, and she recognized one of the black fingers that had alarmed Hilda.
“Enjoy yourself all you can to-night, my lively friend,” she said to herself. “If a trap can catch you this will be the last chance you will have to frighten anybody.”
She took care, however, not to enlighten Hilda as to her discovery and for many days the child avoided the lounge, fearing the “black fingers.”
CHAPTER VI—HILDA A LITERAL FOLLOWER OF BUNYAN
“Fair Meadow,” the home of the Merryman family for generations, was a large old-time farmhouse, built of gray stone, with dormer windows in the roof, broad window and door sills, and within and without gave the assurance of genuine home comfort, peace and good-will.
It lay between “My Lady’s Manor” and “Friedenheim,” within a short distance of each, and save for a wide lane and a meadow, would have been opposite the cottage of Jerusha Flint, on the other side of the road. It was a true Christian home, and its influence, like that of the Courtneys, was felt throughout the neighborhood.
The Merrymans were generous, genial people, and entertained city and country friends with cordial hospitality, but it was seldom that the farmhouse wore such a festive appearance as upon one evening the middle of the February following the summer and autumn that Jerusha Flint held possession of the cottage.
The occasion was a reception in honor of a bride and groom, the bride being Mr. Merryman’s sister, married at her father’s residence in Baltimore and returning that evening from a southern tour.
Snow had fallen the day before, which necessitated sending sleighs instead of carriages to Dorton Station for the bridal party, and Mrs. Merryman, seeing her husband drive down the lane in the lead of three other sleighs, realized that time had passed too rapidly; the guests would soon be there, and she was not dressed to receive them.
With a satisfied glance at the supper table—brilliant with silver, china and glass—she was hurrying up the stair-way to her dressing-room when she heard a feeble knock upon the hall door, and, retracing her steps, she opened it.