“Pumpkin pies and toasted brown bread; it will be ready in less than five minutes.”
“Ah, this is good! there is nothing I love so well. But, Ponto, let this paper alone. Here, you little rascal!” (For Ponto was running off with the “Era;” going sideways in a highly comical way, that he might not step on it.) “Ponto grows more roguish: I am afraid you help to spoil him, Miss Hedelquiver.”
And in all that he said and did—I mean Mr. Cullen, of course—he was like a good son, running over with delight and sociability at finding himself beneath the home-roof once more.
“The handsomest pie I ever saw,” said he, as uncle was beginning to carve it.
I looked at aunt, but she would not look at me. She would say—“I think so too. Rosamonde put on the cross and border. Neither Bessy nor I should ever have thought of such a thing.”
Mr. Cullen looked up to me, I know, and uncle, too; but I was drinking, and kept my eyes down in my tumbler of water. “I am vexed,” thought I, for one moment, “for this is what she will keep doing.” But the next moment I looked about me undauntedly, and thought—“Yet, if she does, I wont be vexed. I will only do those things that I do in such a way that she can’t hold me up for admiration. Good! I fancy Mr. Cullen will see something not quite so pretty as that chicken-pie, before many days.” And I was full of mirth at thought of the hodge-podge I will perpetrate if I am troubled.
Mr. Cullen went over to Mr. Monroe’s after dinner, and brought Paulina back with him to take her supper with us and spend the evening. She was in the new Thibet, the new collar and under-sleeves, so that she was rather stiff, rather careful about her ways, but pretty as a rose and lily tied together, and Mr. Cullen evidently thought the same. He ate a part of her Baldwin apple, when she complained of its being so large that she could neither hold it with both her hands (and she spread them before him to let him see how much too small they were for that) nor eat it if she could hold it. She didn’t allow Ponto to come very near her new Thibet, or new under-sleeves, and so Mr. Cullen let the little fellow run over himself and me. He played backgammon with her, game after game, as he talked with the rest, and allowed her to beat him in every game; whereupon she patted his shoulder with her dice-box and called him a careless goose.
“Rosamonde Hedelquiver,” said she to me, as she was putting on her furs to go, “what made you keep on this common-looking dress, and these plain duds,” touching her finger to my linen cuffs and collar. “I thought you would be all dressed up in your best, and so I put these on. I was mad with myself for my pains when I saw you.”
“Ah, this is nothing, any way, Paulina. Here is your hood; it is a beauty.”
“Yes, I like it pretty well. I suppose you’ll ride every day on horseback, just as you have done?”