Up to that moment not a word had been said of the musicale, but Lottie bided her time, and just as Kitty was getting out she laughingly said:
“You do not invite me, but I mean to go in and see if I cannot coax you to reconsider your decision with regard to the musicale after all, and persuade your husband to sing. You don’t know how much I am in earnest.”
She followed Kitty into the house, and while her own fingers helped to disrobe little Freddie, she went on:
“If you do not come I shall think you have never forgiven those thoughtless words I said in your hearing the first time I ever saw you. You remember them, I am sure, but you do not know how sorry I was, especially when I learned who you were. It was wrong under any circumstances, but we had been so annoyed with commonplace people coming just to be noticed, and besides that I’d had a little ‘tiff’ that morning with Amasa about calling on the dowdiest woman you ever saw, and I was not in the best of moods. You will forgive me, won’t you, and be friends? Ah, that must be your lunch bell. I’d no idea it was so late.”
“Stay to lunch, won’t you?” Kitty faltered, devoutly hoping her visitor would decline; but she did not.
She was nearly famished, she said, and accepted the invitation graciously, and followed on to the dining-room, where the lunch-table was very neatly spread, for Kitty was particular about everything pertaining to her table, which was arranged with as much care for herself and Freddie as it was when she had company to dinner. And Susan waited nicely and suggested that she bring the fresh apple pie she had made that morning, and which looked so tempting, with its white, flaky crust, that Mrs. Lottie took a large piece, and ate a ginger-snap which Susan also brought.
Apple pie and ginger-snaps were evidently favorites in that house, and Lottie praised them both, and asked how they were made, and said her husband had told her about them. She was outdoing herself, and when at last she said good-by and went out to her cross coachman, who had driven up and down, up and down, and actually sworn about her to the footman, she had Kitty’s promise that John should sing, and that possibly she herself would attend the musicale, while to crown all there was in her pocket a receipt for ginger-snaps, which Susan had given her at the last moment, when she stood in the hall telling Kitty, “It would not be a dress affair—that anything she had would answer.”
Lottie was in a very pleasant frame of mind when she reached home that day. She had accomplished her object, as she felt that she deserved to do, for had she not called on Kitty Craig and apologized for her rudeness, and taken her to drive, and lunched with her in that “under-ground” dining-room, not much longer than her butler’s pantry, and lunched, too, on apple pie and ginger-snaps, food which heretofore she had thought only fit for those made of coarser clay than herself, and was there not in her pocket a receipt for those same snaps, which poor, deluded Susan, who had taken a great fancy to the grand lady, thought maybe her cook might like, as Mr. Steele was so fond of them! Celine and ginger-snaps! and Lottie laughed merrily as she took out the receipt and began to read, “One cup of molasses; half-a-cup of butter; and half-a-cup of lard——”
“Lard! Horrors, I can never insult her dignity with that. Amasa must go elsewhere for his snaps,” and turning to the grate the little bit of paper was soon blackening upon the coals, and Amasa’s chance for snaps at home was lost.