They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they got! and how their senses were sharpened!
“Hark!” said Miss Matilda,—“what 's that rumblin'?”
It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any other time they would not have heard. After this there was a lull, and poor Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Presently a crackling and grinding of gravel;—how much that means, when we are waiting for those whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the gravel-crackling.
“Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're comin'! Mother! mother!”
Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. Enter the first set of visitors. The Event of the Season has begun.
“Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala 's come in that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!”
Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this observation and the remark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude of attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in the attiring-room, up one flight.
“How fine everything is in the great house!” said Mrs. Crane,—“jest look at the picters!”
“Matildy Sprowle's drawin's,” said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.
“I should think so,” said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,—a wide-awake girl, who had n't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on the lead pencil herself. “I should like to know whether that's a hay-cock or a mountain!”