In the absence of Frederic and Alice, she had counted upon a day of leisure, which Marian’s arrival had seriously interrupted.
“I beg you not to trouble yourself for me,” said Marian, who readily understood the matter. “I never care for a regular dinner: indeed, I may not be hungry at all.”
The old lady’s face brightened perceptibly, and she replied:
“Oh, I don’t mind a cup of tea, and the like o’ that; but to brile or stew this hot day ain’t so pleasant, when a person is fleshy, as I am. I’ll get you something, though; and now you go up stairs to your room, the one at the right hand, with the white furniture, and the silver jigger, that lets the water into that marble dish. We live in style, I tell you; and Mr. Raymond is a gentleman, if there ever was one—only he wants meat three times a day, just as he has in Kentucky. Thinks, I ’spose, it don’t hurt me any more to sweat over the fire, than it does that Dinah, Alice talks so much about. Yes, that’s the door—right there;” and Mrs. Russell went back to the making of her dress, while Marian sought her chamber, feeling rather disappointed at the absence of both Frederic and Alice, whose object in visiting New York, that day, will be explained in the succeeding chapter, and will necessarily take us backward for a little in our story.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FREDERIC AND ALICE VISIT MARIAN’S OLD HOME.
“Frederic,” said Alice, about six weeks before Marian’s arrival at Riverside, “who hired that Mrs. Merton to take care of you when you were sick at the hotel?”
“The proprietor, I suppose,” returned Frederic.
Alice continued:
“But who told him of her?”
“I don’t know,” said Frederic. “She was from the country, I believe.”