“I am not your darling,” Mildred answered quickly; “and I’m going to be,—mistress of Thornton Park,” she added, after a little hesitancy, while Hugh rejoined: “As you have given Gerard to Bessie, I don’t see how you’ll bring it about, unless Mrs. Thornton dies, a thing not unlikely, and you marry that big-feeling man, whom you say you hate because he turned you from his premises. Have you forgotten that?”
Mildred had not forgotten it, and her face was scarlet as she recalled the time the past summer when, wishing to buy a dress for Charlie, then six months old, she had gone into one of Mr. Thornton’s pastures after huckleberries, which grew there so abundantly, and which found a ready market at the groceries in town. In Rocky Point, berries were considered public property, and she had no thought that she was trespassing until a voice close to her said, “What are you doing here? Begone, before I have you arrested.”
In great alarm Mildred had seized her ten quart pail, which was nearly full, and hurried away, never venturing again upon the forbidden ground.
“Yes, I remember it,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep me from being mistress of the Park, if I had a chance and he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t I make a good one?”
“Ye-es,” Hugh answered slowly, as he looked her over from her head to her feet. “But you’ll have to grow taller and fill out some, and do something with that snarly pate of yours, which looks this morning like an oven broom,” and with this thrust at her bushy hair Hugh disappeared from the door just in time to escape the dipper of water which went splashing after him.
“Oven broom, indeed!” Mildred said indignantly, with a pull at the broom; “I wonder if I am to blame for my hair. I hate it!”
This was Mildred’s favorite expression, and there were but few things to which she had not applied it. But most of all she hated her humble home and the boiled dinner she put upon the table just as the clock struck twelve, wondering as she did so if they knew what such a dish was at Thornton Park, and what they were having there that day.
CHAPTER II.
AT THORNTON PARK.
Meanwhile the barouche had stopped under the grand archway at the side entrance of the Park house, where a host of servants was in waiting; the butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the laundress, the maids, the gardener and groom and several more, for, aping his English ancestry and the custom of his mother’s Southern home before the war, Mr. Thornton kept about him a retinue of servants with whom he was very popular. He paid them well and fed them well, and while requiring from them the utmost deference, was kind in every way, and they came crowding around him with words of welcome and offers of assistance. Mrs. Thornton went at once to her room, while Alice was taken possession of by her nurse, who had come from the city the night before, and who soon had her charge in a little willow carriage, drawing her around the grounds. Gerard, who was a quiet, studious boy, went to the library, while Mr. Thornton, after seeing that his wife was comfortable, joined his little daughter, whose love for her country home he knew, and to whom he said, “I suppose you are quite happy now?”
“Yes, papa,” she replied, “only I want somebody to play with me. Ann is too big. I want Milly Leach. She was so nice to me last summer. Can’t I have her, papa?”