"No:" the no was hesitating. "He is dangerously attractive: at least he attracts me. I'm all the time wondering what he is thinking, which keeps me perpetually thinking of him. He is a Southerner, you know, and was in the army; so you must be very careful,'my dear mees,' as Mr. Brown says, not to come out with your 'truly loyal' sentiments: he won't like them."
"I don't care whether he likes them or not." Miss Featherstone's face was crimson: it was the first spark of temper she had shown since she came into the house.
Mrs. Pinckney looked at her in surprise, then laughed: "I'm delighted to see something human about you: I thought you were a saint."
"By no manner of means," returned the governess curtly.
"I shall warn Dick not to get upon the subject of the war," was the note that Mrs. Pinckney, inconsequent as she generally was, made of the scene.—"But I'm forgetting why I sent for you," she said aloud. "I want you to go to town and buy Christmas presents and quantities of things to eat and drink. I was going myself, but I never can count upon a day as to being well with any certainty," with rather an ostentatious sigh. "I've made out a list: there's plenty of money, isn't there?"
Miss Featherstone had the care of the money and accounts: "Yes," hesitatingly; "that is—"
"No matter," interrupted Mrs. Pinckney. "I have accounts at hosts of places. The carriage is ordered to take you to the station: will you be ready, dear, at ten o'clock?"
Miss Featherstone looked at her watch and hurried to her room.
It was snowing when she returned from New York: great flakes fell on her as she stepped, loaded with bundles, out of the carriage. The children met her with joyful whoops at the front door: "Oh, here's clear little Miss Featherstone, and we know she's got our Christmas presents.—You can't deny it. Hurrah!"
They dragged her into the dining-room, where the table, decked with flowers, was handsomely arranged for dinner. A blazing wood-fire roared on the hearth: in front of it stood a tall, handsome man with a military air. He was dark, with brilliant eyes, a certain regularity of features, and, as his passport declared, his hair was dark brown and curly. Colonel Pinckney looked haughty and impenetrable, as his sister-in-law had described him. Mrs. Pinckney, exquisitely dressed, reclined in a large chair by the corner of the fireplace: she held up a pretty fan to screen her face from the heat, and was talking gayly to her brother-in-law. At a table in a corner Mr. Brown, by the light of a large lamp, was endeavoring, with great difficulty, to read an English paper.