Is waiting thee.
Adelaide Anne Procter.
Fluff woke up before they reached their destination, very much refreshed by her brief nap. When the cab stopped before the side door of Mrs. Watkins’s, and she caught sight of Fern standing on the threshold, as though she had been waiting there some time, she gave a little cry, and literally jumped into her sister’s arms.
“Oh, Fluff, Fluff! what does this mean?” exclaimed poor Fern, who had passed a most miserable afternoon, picturing Fluff being borne in a policeman’s arms to the nearest hospital; but Fluff silenced her by an embrace so vehement that it nearly produced strangulation.
“It is all right, Fern, so don’t scold me. Grandpapa was not so very angry—at least, only just at first; but he sent me in the beautifulest supper, such nice things on a big gold plate—really gold, you know, like Princess Dove’s; and Mr. Erle was there, and Percy—and oh! I forgot the poor man in the cab, who is blind—quite blind, but he is very nice too.”
“Will you let me explain about your little sister, Miss Trafford,” said Raby in his pleasant voice; and Fern, turning in some surprise, saw a very tall man in clerical dress standing beside her, as she afterward expressed it to her mother, “with the very nicest face she had ever seen.”
“I do not know if you have ever heard my name; I am Mr. Ferrers, and your friend Miss Davenport, as she calls herself, is my sister’s cousin.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” and Fern’s voice grew pitiful all at once; “and you have come just as Crystal has left us; did Florence tell you? Oh, I am so sorry, so very sorry.”
“Yes, the child told me; but there is much that I want to ask you. May I come in? The cab will wait for me.” And then, as Fern guided him up the narrow staircase, she told him that her mother was out—an evening class had detained her; and she had been thankful that this had been the case, and that she should have been spared the anxiety about Fluff. Mrs. Watkins’s boy was scouring the neighborhood, making inquiries of every one he met; and she had just made up her mind to send for her mother when the cab drove up.
“And she really found her way to Belgrave House?” asked Fern, in a voice between laughing and crying; “oh, what will mother say,” and she listened with eagerness to Mr. Ferrers’s account of how the child had accosted him, and of her meeting with Mr. Huntingdon.