It was growing quite late, when Lottie suddenly started up with a rather guilty air.
"Have I been asleep, Miss Ramsay? How rude you must have thought me! But when I am tired, and Averil strokes my hair, she always sends me to sleep. Why, it is nearly ten o'clock!"—jumping up in a hurry. "Oh, Averil, you ought to have woke me! The girls' room is in such a state, and Georgina made me promise to put it tidy."
"Suppose I ask Unwin to do it as a favor—you are half asleep, Lottie. She looks like a little owl, does she not, Annette?"
"Oh, no; we must not trouble Unwin. And there is aunt's room, too. It is all my fault for going to sleep and forgetting my duties;" and Lottie's pretty face wore its harassed look again.
"What is there to do? At least I can help you," observed Annette, eagerly. "Is it to make things tidy? Surely that is not difficult. My cousin, I should love to help Miss Jones, if she will have me."
"Very well; we will all go," returned Averil, gratified by Annette's ready good-nature; and Lottie at once brightened up.
Annette looked a little astonished as they entered the large, handsome room; the bed, chairs, even the floor, seemed strewn with a profusion of garments, the toilet table heaped with laces, gloves, and trinkets. "What gorgeousness! what splendor!" thought Annette; but she did not utter her wonder aloud; she only shook out the folds of a black lace dress that was trailing across a couple of chairs, and began folding it with quick, deft fingers.
Averil was called away at this moment; when she returned all traces of chaos had been removed. Annette was standing by the toilet table rolling up some ribbons, and Lottie was locking up the trinkets in the dressing-case.
"Oh, Averil!" she exclaimed, "Miss Ramsay has been helping me so nicely. She has folded up all the dresses, and she does it as well as Unwin. And now she has promised to mend that lace flounce for me to-morrow, so I shall be able to practice before Herr Ludwig comes. Maud was so bent on my doing it, though I told her that my piece was not nearly perfect."
"But to me it is a trifle," replied Annette, quickly. "I can work a new sprig where the old one has been rent. Miss Jones will not know it has been mended at all, and to me it will be play. And now, if there is nothing else that I can do, will you permit me to retire? for, like Miss Jones, my eyes are heavy, and the hour is later than that to which I have always accustomed myself."