Imagine Mrs. Carter’s mortification, when the grinning Chloe came running into the sitting-room with the count’s card crushed in her eager hand, to discover that the wretched girl was in her stocking feet; capless, with her wrapped plaits sticking out all over her head like quills upon the fretful porcupine; her apron on hind part before.
“Chloe! Where is your cap?” exclaimed that elegant lady.
“Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it. It do make my haid eatch so I done pulled it off.”
“And your shoes?”
“I’s savin’ them fer big meetin’ nex’ year.”
“And why do you wear your apron in the back? Put it on right this minute.”
“Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an’ my ap’on was clean, so I jes’ slid it ’roun’ behinst so it wouldn’t git siled, too.”
Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the front porch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All she could do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.
If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he could not have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over the fair lady’s hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle of Chloe’s walking off, with her clean apron on hind part before and her shoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings, did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.