"Did you, indeed, my dear?" asked Mrs. Farquharson, smiling, and wiping her eyes with her apron. "And advertised for me. In the papers. Reward offered and no questions asked. I've read them myself, but never did I think."
"Oh, yes. I wanted you very badly," Phyllis assured her again. "I used to tease Burbage when I was naughty, by telling her you were never cross with me."
"And who is Burbage?" asked Mrs. Farquharson.
"She is my uncle's housekeeper. She was very good to me, too. But I missed you dreadfully. You know, John, my mother and father were away from home for weeks at a time, and Farquharson took such care of me."
"Such games as we had," said Mrs. Farquharson reflectively; and then to John,—"She was everything whatever from Mary, Queen of Scots, to a dromedary, I've beheaded her many's the time, and her humps was the pillows off her little bed. If Genevieve hasn't burned those chops to a cinder, they must be ready, and why ever she doesn't bring them up I do not know."
What a dainty supper! John did full justice to it.
Mrs. Farquharson brooded over Phyllis; but she could eat nothing.
The kind-hearted woman maintained a constant stream of talk, in which lodgers, rooms, chops, apricots, and toast, and the old times were inextricably intermingled.
The first-floor front and his wife had seen better days; in stocks, they were. The vagaries of Mr. Rowlandson, the bookseller, third-floor front, the walls of his rooms lined with—what do you think? No, not with books, nor pictures, but with glazed cases containing old patch-boxes and old fans. Mrs. Farquharson had seen Mr. Singleton and Mr. Leonard once. But the trio of painters was inseparable no longer. Mr. Knowles had married their favorite model. "The hussy!" said Mrs. Farquharson.
One reminiscence followed another.