CHAPTER XV.
A MISOGYNIST.
Acting upon this wise resolution, Missy came down the next morning a little late, to breakfast. She was not going to escape any one. She had on a fresh cambric morning-dress, and some roses in her belt. The breakfast-table looked quite populous when she entered, for Mr. Andrews was at the foot of the table, and the two children on one side, and Miss Varian on the other, in the seat that had been placed for Missy. Miss Varian's coming had been rather a surprise to everyone, for she had been nursing her neuralgia so assiduously, no one imagined it would go away so soon. Mr. Andrews got up when Miss Rothermel came in, and Jay shouted a welcome from out of his hominy plate.
Aunt Harriet said, "Well, Missy, I suppose you didn't expect to see me."
"You've got Missy's place," said Jay, without ceremony.
"Oh, no matter," cried Missy, turning a little pale, for she foresaw that her fate would be to sit at the head of the table and pour out the tea. Nobody sat there ordinarily, and the waitress poured out the tea. But the table was not very large, and Aunt Harriet had spread out herself, and her strawberries, and her glass of water, and her cup of coffee, and her little bouquet of flowers, over so much of the side on which she sat, that it would have caused quite a disturbance to have made a place for Missy there.
"Where will you sit, Miss Rothermel?" asked the waitress, with her hand on the chair, looking perplexed, and glancing from the encumbered neighborhood of Miss Varian, to the freer region behind the urn and tea-cups.
"Oh, anywhere, it makes no difference," said Missy, determined not to fail the first time she was put to the test. "Here, if it is more convenient."
The servant placed the chair at the head of the table, which Missy promptly took. Mr. Andrews, who had been standing with rather an anxious face, as if he saw his guest's struggle, sat down with a relieved expression.