"Miss Addie, Miss Addie, what are you doing sitting moping there? Why don't you go out for a good brisk walk this lovely afternoon, and get up a bit of an appetite for your dinner, which you want badly enough, I've been noticing for the last week?" says Mrs. Turner, unceremoniously, entering the room about half an hour later, and laying her hand with a motherly gesture on the girl's shoulder, as she reclines in an arm-chair by the open window.
"A walk, Sally? I don't feel equal to it somehow; and I have no one to walk with me; besides, they're all otherwise engaged."
The old woman grunts, and then says abruptly—
"When is your husband coming home, Miss Addie? He's a long time away."
"Yes," she answers, a little sadly, "more than six weeks; and he meant at first, to remain only ten days; then he got that telegram, you know, which obliged him to go to New York. But in his last letter he says he hopes to be home soon now—next week probably."
"I hope he will. To my mind, Miss Addie, there's been a sight too much junketing and racketing going on in this house, and it's time some of it should be put a stop to. It's not agreeing with you, my dear, let me tell you—far from it."
"Sally," says Addie, after a short pause, "I am very like my mother, am I not?"
The question startles the old woman; she looks quickly at her young mistress, and then answers lightly—
"You are and you aren't, my dear. Of course there's a certain likeness—for you're not a bit of a Lefroy; but she was a far prettier woman than you, Miss Addie, far prettier."
"I know that; but the other day I was looking at that picture of her painted ten months before she died, and I thought her very like me—only prettier, of course, as you say."