“Ain’t you ashamed, ’Lena, to be peeking?” asked Carrie, while Durward repeated—“’Lena! ’Lena! I’ve seen her before in the cars between Springfield and Albany; but how came she here?”
“She lives here—she’s our cousin,” said Anna, notwithstanding the twitch given to her sleeve by Carrie, who did not care to have the relationship exposed.
“Your cousin,” said Durward, “and where’s the old lady who was with her?”
“The one she called granny?” asked John Jr., on purpose to rouse up his fiery little cousin.
“No, I don’t call her granny, neither—I’ve quit it,” said ’Lena, angrily, adding, as a sly hit at Kentucky talk, “she’s up stars, sick with the rheumatism.”
“Good,” said Durward, “but why are you not down here with us?”
“I didn’t want to come,” was her reply; and Durward, leading her into the parlor, continued, “but now that you are here, you must stay.”
“Pretty, isn’t she,” said Nellie, as the full blaze of the chandelier fell upon ’Lena.
“Rath-er,” was Carrie’s hesitating reply.
She felt annoyed that ’Lena should be in the parlor, and provoked that Durward should notice her in any way, and at the first opportunity she told him “how much she both troubled and mortified them, by her vulgarity and obstinacy,” adding that “she had a most violent temper.” From Nellie she had learned that Durward particularly disliked passionate girls, and for this reason she strove to give him the impression that ’Lena was such an one. Once or twice she fancied him half inclined to disbelieve her, as he saw how readily ’Lena joined in their amusements, and how good-humoredly she bore John Jr.’s teasing, and then she hoped something would occur to prove her words true. Her wish was gratified.