“Let her stay until night, then. I guess the darkness will cure her of her stubbornness,” chuckled Mrs. Barry, evilly.
But all the same she had sent Agnes Walker, her maid, back to Lewisburg with old Abe, with instructions to buy the summer silk and a white muslin besides. The old lady had very particular reasons for wanting her niece to have this finery.
And while the prisoner sobbed herself to sleep in the garret, and Agnes Walker tumbled over silks and muslins in Lewisburg, Mrs. Barry had Ginny Ann unpacking trunks in the dressing-room and hauling out finery that had not seen the light for years, but which in the revolutions of fashion’s wheel was as fashionable now as in the long ago years when Mrs. Barry had bedecked her form in the costliest fabrics and richest laces to grace the grand society in which she moved before she had settled down, a childless widow, at lonely Ferndale, her dower house, to nurse her grief for her lost partner and her chronic dyspepsia together and to make herself a terror to any one who dared dispute her despotic will.
“Lor’, ole mis, dere’s dat white satting dress you wore when you went to see de queen ober de water,” exclaimed old Ginny Ann, as she lifted out a tray and disclosed beneath a lustrous heap of yellow satin and flounces of fine point lace. “But, Lor’ A’mighty, it’s all yallered er layin’. I ’speck I kin bleach de lace all right by layin’ it out in de dew at night, but dat satting won’t wash, and it’s jes’ ruinated,” sighing heavily and rolling up the whites of her eyes.
“There, don’t touch it, you old simpleton!” cried Mrs. Barry, hastily. “That dress has sacred memories. I wore it at a Drawing-room in London when I was presented to Queen Victoria on my wedding-tour, and on my return home at an Inauguration Ball in Washington, when our good President, Mr. Fillmore, took his seat. Shut up the trunk, Ginny Ann. I cannot cut up that dress even for my niece.”
“Dat’s so, dat’s so, ole mis. De impertent chile don’t deserbe it!” mumbled Ginny Ann.
“Hold your tongue, sauce-box!” cried her mistress, irately.
CHAPTER III.
But Molly Trueheart was not sulking in the garret as Ginny Ann had reported to her “ole miss.”
She had slept but a little while when she was awakened by a sound that made her spring to her feet with a shriek of alarm—the hurrying and scurrying of immense rats across the attic floor. Her black eyes opened wide in terror, and she sprang upon the sofa, and stood watching the loathsome animals as, startled by her scream, they scampered to their holes.