“Kin read, too, for don’t you mind how’t Miss Alice say. ‘Won’t be here to-day,’ and it’s writ on the paper, ‘Comin’ to-morry.’” And, fully satisfied that he had convinced his audience, Uncle Phil hastened off, ere Hetty had time for further argument. So certain was Phil that Alice’s surmises were correct and the telegram interpreted aright, and so anxious withal to prove himself sure, that he would not go to Frankfort, as he proposed doing.
“There was no use on’t,” he said. “Marster wouldn’t be thar till to-morry,” and he whiled away the afternoon at leisure.
But alas for Uncle Phil. Mrs. Warren had made a mistake in Frederic’s last letter, the young man writing he should be home on the 15th, whereas she had read it the 17th; afterward, Frederic had decided to leave Riverside one day earlier, and he telegraphed from Cincinnati for Phil to meet him. Finding neither carriage nor servant in waiting, he hired a conveyance, and about four o’clock P. M. from every cabin door there came the joyful cry—
“Marster Frederic has come.”
“Told you so,” said Hetty, with an exultant glance at Uncle Phil, who wisely made no reply, but hastened with the rest to tell his master, “How d’ye?”
“How is it that some one did not meet me?” Frederic asked, after the first noisy outbreak had somewhat subsided. “Didn’t you get the dispatch?”
The negroes looked at Phil, who stammered out—
“Yes, we done got it, but dem ole iron specs of mine is mighty nigh wore out—can’t see in ’em at all, and I read ‘to-morry’ instead of ‘to-day.’”
The loud shout which followed this excuse enlightened Frederic as to the true state of the case, and he, too, joined in the laugh, telling the crest-fallen Phil that “he should surely have a new pair of silver specs which would read ‘to-day’ instead of ‘to-morry.’”
“But where is Alice?” he continued. “Why don’t she come to greet me?”