“I do know her,” Alex. replied. “I may almost say I have had her in my arms.”
“What do you mean?” Amy and Ruth and his mother asked in a breath, and Alex. replied: “My dog nearly knocked her down, and I got to the spot in time to save her, and, by George, neither of you have more an air to the purple born than she has. She is not a common personage, and ought to be sitting with us instead of waiting upon us.”
“Don’t be foolish, nor talk so loud; here she comes,” Amy said, as Sherry appeared with Mrs. Marsh’s soup and then went back for another dish.
“Well, just look at her and see how she carries herself. All the fellows are watching her, and Charlie Reeves, I know, is dying to be at our table,” Alex. said; then, as it was some little time before his soup came to him, he began to wonder at the delay and why the girls all walked as if in a slow drill when he was so hungry, and there was Charlie Reeves eating dry bread he was so famished.
The dinner progressed slowly, as it must if Mrs. Groves’ orders were followed, and Alex.’s impatience increased, and but for his mother he would have gone into the kitchen to see “why they were so infernally slow, and why they couldn’t bring and carry more than one thing at a time.”
“It is hot here as a furnace, and we shan’t get through till dark. I’m going to tell her to hurry anyway,” he said.
“Tell whom?” Amy asked, and he replied, “Why, Miss—what’s her name? You know.”
“You mean No. 1,” Amy said, and Alex. replied: “No. 1 be hanged! That’s no name for a girl. She has another, of course. What is it? She told me. Fanny? Yes, Fanny! Pretty name, too, and there she comes with one plate of salad, where she might have brought two or three, and by George if there isn’t——”
The rest of his sentence was a loud, “Sherry, you wretch! what are you doing here? Go back!”
Every one in the room was startled, and no one as much as Sherry. She had seen the dog looking in at her from the kitchen door, but had no idea he was following her, and Alex.’s sharp outcry, “Sherry, you wretch!” unnerved her completely. She did not think of the dog, or that he was meant. It was herself. She had done something wrong, and every object in the room began to swim before her and the strength in her arms to leave her. There was a crash, and tray and salad were on the floor, with the dog sniffing at them, and Alex. was bending over the débris, his hair once touching Sherry’s as he picked up the tray and she the broken plate.