Ruby Ann isn't easy to tackle, and Mrs. Biggs was there with her gab, if she is my niece, and said I got it dirt cheap."
"Go to thunder with your Ruby Ann and Mrs. Biggs and dirt cheap!" the Colonel roared. "Who said I wanted you to beat 'em down? Why, man, I told you I gave thirty for the house and five for Mandy Ann, and here they have sold the whole caboodle, Judy and all, for five dollars! Five dollars! Do you hear? Five dollars, for what cost thirty-five! I consider they've insulted Mandy Ann and Judy both. Five dollars! I'll be—"
He didn't finish his sentence, for he heard Amy's voice in the hall. She might be coming, and he said hastily to Peter, "Put them in the closet. Don't let her see them, or there'll be the old Harry to pay."
Peter obeyed, but Amy did not come in, and after a moment the Colonel continued, "We will keep them here a while. I dare say she'll never think of them again. She doesn't think much. Do you believe she will ever be any better?"
The Colonel's voice shook as he asked the question, and Peter's shook a little as he replied, "Please God she may. A great shock of some kind might do it."
"Yes, but where is the shock to come from, hedged round as she is from every rough wind or care?" the Colonel said, little thinking with what strides the shock was hastening on, or through what channel it was to come.
CHAPTER XV
AT THE RUMMAGE
The rooms were ready at last, and twenty tired ladies went through them to see that every thing was in its proper place, and then went home with high anticipations of the morrow and what it would bring. It opened most propitiously and was one of those soft, balmy September days, more like early June than autumn. There were brisk sales and crowds of people all day, with the probability of greater crowds and brisker sales in the evening. Jack Harcourt was in and out, watching the sale of what his sister had sent, drinking cups of chocolate every time a pretty girl asked him to do so, and buying toys and picture books and candy, and distributing them among the children gathered around the door and windows. He thought he had looked at everything on sale, but had failed to find the white apron. Where was it? he wondered. He would not ask Ruby Ann or Mrs. Biggs, as that would be giving himself away. It would certainly be there in the evening when he was to bring Eloise in her chair. He had settled that with Tim, who gave up rather unwillingly, but was consoled by being hired as errand boy,—an office he could not have filled had he been hampered with a wheel chair.
The night was glorious, with a moon near its full, and a little before seven Jack presented himself at Mrs. Biggs's, finding Eloise ready and alone. Tim was at the rooms, running hither and thither at everybody's beck and call, and his mother was there, running the whole thing,—judging from her manner as she moved among the crowd filling the rooms nearly to suffocation. Eloise had more than once changed her mind about going, as she sat waiting for Jack. She was shy with strangers, and there would be so many there, and she would be so conspicuous in her chair, with Mr. Harcourt in attendance, that she began to doubt the propriety of going.
"If it were Tim who was to take me, I believe I should feel differently," she was thinking, when Jack came in, breezy and excited,—full of the Rummage and anxious to be off.