She found her trunks outside her door, and selecting from them her new calico dress, which she had bought just before leaving home, she put it on, together with one of the pretty white aprons which Neil had so detested and Grey had so admired.
"I ought to have a housemaid's cap," she thought, is she looked at herself in the glass and tried to smooth and straighten her hair, which would curl around her forehead in spite of all she could do.
A clean collar, with cuffs at her wrists, completed her costume, and it was a very neat, attractive little housemaid which entered the room where Miss McPherson was leisurely finishing her plain breakfast of toast, and tea, and eggs.
"Oh, auntie," Bessie began advancing to her side, "I am so sorry I overslept. I was very tired, and the bed was so nice. It shall not happen again. What can I do for you? Let me make you a fresh slice of toast."
"No, thanks. I am through. You can clear the table if you like," Miss Betsey replied, shoving back her chair and eyeing her niece curiously as she gathered up the dishes and carried them to the kitchen, where she took her own breakfast with the cook, who instructed her in her duties as well as she could.
"She is mighty queer and mighty particular, but if you get the soft side of her you are all right," she said to Bessie, who moved about the house almost as handily as if she had lived there all her life.
Never had the china been washed more carefully or quickly, or the furniture better dusted, or the table better arranged for dinner, and had Bessie been a trained servant from the queen's household she could not have waited upon her aunt more deftly or respectfully than she did. But the strain upon her nerves began to tell upon her, and after her dishes were washed, and she was assured by the cook that there was nothing more for her to do until tea-time, she went to her room for a little rest, just as a carriage dashed up to the door, and the bell rang fiercely. Scarcely, however, had Bessie reached the hall on her way to answer the ring, when her aunt, who, it seemed to her, was everywhere present, darted out from some quarter, and seizing her by the shoulder said, quickly:
"Go back to your room. I'll let her in myself."
Was she angry, and if so, at what? Bessie wondered, as she returned to her room, and sitting down by the bed laid her tired head upon the pillow, while a few tears rolled down her cheeks as she recalled her aunt's sharp tones. Was this to be all the commendation she was to receive for the pains she had taken to please? It was hard, and there began to steal over her a feeling of utter hopelessness and homesickness, when suddenly a sound came up to her from the parlor below, which made her start and listen as to something familiar. Surely she had heard that loud, uncultivated voice before, and after a moment it came to her—the tea party in the dear old garden at home when Mrs. Rossiter-Browne was the guest, and had so disgusted her with her vulgarity. And this was Mrs. Browne, who had come in state to call, and who, after declaring the weather hot enough to kill cattle, and saying that Gusty was in Saratogy, and had had twelve new dresses made to take with her, spoke next of Allen and Lord Hardy, who were in Idaho, or Omaho, or some other ho, Mrs. Browne could not remember which. At the mention of Lord Hardy's name all Bessie's old life seemed to come back to her, and she lived again through the dreary days at the crowded hotels, and ate her dinner of dry bread and shriveled grapes in the back room of the fourth floor, and saw her mother radiant with smiles bandying jests with the young Irish lord, while her father looked on with a sorry expression on his face, the very memory of which brought a rain of tears to Bessie's eyes. Allen had just written to his mother a description of his travels, and she was giving Miss McPherson her version of it. Another lord had joined them, she said, a regular English swell, and they attracted so much attention, and the people were so curious to see them, that they were actually obliged to travel in a cognito, though what under the sun that was she was sure she didn't know. She thought she had been in most everything there was goin, but she'd never seen a cognito, which must be some Western contrivance or other. At this ludicrous mistake, so characteristic of Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, Bessie forgot her tears and laughed hysterically until she heard her mother's name, when she instinctively grew quiet and rigid as a piece of marble, for what Mrs. Browne said was this:
"And so the poor little critter is dead! Well, I must say she was about the prettiest woman I ever saw, but I guess she wasn't just what I s'posed she was when I took such a shine to her. She was a born flirt, and mebbe couldn't help it, but she might have let Allen alone—a mere boy. Why, he was that bewitched after her that he fairly lost flesh, and told me to my face that he should never see another woman he liked as he did her, and he'd never got over it neither if Lord Hardy hadn't taken him in hand and told him something—I've no idea what, for Allen would never tell me, only it did the business, and there was no more whimperin' for that woman."