“We’ll buy all that in Berlin,” said Helen consolingly to her sister, who was putting on her plain little straw hat with a look of deep concern, quite unconscious of the fact how charmingly becoming it was to her rosy face. The judge walked up and down in the room, casting brief remarks at his ladies from time to time. “Don’t take your entire outfit along just for two or three days,” he remarked warningly.
Evening came fast enough; every moment was made the most of, and when the lamps were lit there was still this and that waiting to be attended to. At the last moment—they were just sitting down to tea—a thought struck the paterfamilias; he touched the bell.
“Did you attend to what I told you this morning?” he asked the maid in his mystifying fashion.
Pauline looked at her master with no very intelligent expression in her face.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Did you get what I told you?” queried the judge. Pauline was silent, thereby giving most decided expression to her bewilderment.
“Why, Karl, do tell her what you mean,” implored Helen; “there’s no time to be lost—we must be going!”
“Very well,” replied the judge discontentedly; “of course it is more than you can endure not to know what I am referring to! Did you go and fetch my fur-lined great-coat from the furrier’s?”
Pauline blushed guiltily.
“Oh, dear me, I forgot all about it, sir—I’ll run there now as fast as I can!”