The Staying Guest. Wells Carolyn

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СКАЧАТЬ much is it, Mr. Marks?” she said; and when he told she paid him from her little purse, and bade him good morning.

      She watched until he was well out of sight, and then she went to unlock the door of the morning-room.

      CHAPTER V

      ANOTHER ATTEMPT

      When the Misses Flint saw the door shut behind Ladybird, and heard the key click in the lock, they could believe neither their eyes nor their ears.

      Miss Priscilla rose and walked majestically to the door and turned the knob, fully expecting the door would open. But it would not open, of course, being locked, and the good lady, almost stupefied with anger and amazement, uttered an explosive and exasperated “Well!” and dropped into the nearest chair.

      Miss Dorinda responded with a terrified and apprehensive “Well!” and then the two sisters sat and stared blankly at each other.

      Miss Dorinda spoke first, timidly.

      “Priscilla, don’t you think perhaps it is our duty to give a home to Lavinia’s child?”

      “Duty!” exclaimed the elder sister, in a tense, restrained voice. “Duty! To keep such a vixen as that in our house? No! I confess I had some such thought during the night; but now I have only one desire, and that is, to get rid of her.”

      “Yes,” said Miss Dorinda, sighing; “of course she can’t stay after this; but she seems very affectionate and loving.”

      “Affectionate! Loving! Dorinda Flint, what are you talking about? Do you call it affectionate to lock us helplessly in this room?”

      “No; but that was impulsive, and because she wants to stay here. I don’t think she is really a vicious child.”

      “Well, I don’t want to think anything about her!”

      Miss Priscilla took up a newspaper and pretended to read, so desirous was she of not appearing defeated; and, indeed, she would have stayed quietly in that room all day rather than call for assistance, or in any way show that she was at the mercy of her erratic niece.

      Miss Dorinda was as much perturbed as her sister, but she made no effort to hide it. She fluttered about the room, looked out of the window, tried the door-knob, and at last sat down in a big rocking-chair and began to rock violently.

      Suddenly the door burst open and Ladybird came flying in.

      “Aunties,” she cried, “the house is on fire! What do you want to save most?”

      “Mercy on us!” cried Miss Priscilla, rushing from the room, “let me get my Lady Washington geranium. The buds are just ready to open.”

      “Where is it? I’ll get it,” said Ladybird, dancing around in great excitement.

      “Up-stairs, on a stand by the south-room window; but you can’t go up – you’ll be burned to death.”

      “No, I won’t,” screamed Ladybird, already half-way up-stairs; “I’ll get it. What do you want, Aunt Dorinda?”

      “I don’t know, – everything! Oh, my lace handkerchief,” called the distracted lady. “And get some of your own things; and bring our fire-gowns.”

      Meantime volumes of smoke rolled into the hall through the dining-room door.

      Suddenly Matthew’s face appeared in the midst of the smoke.

      “Don’t be frightened, ma’am,” he said; “it’s all right now. The soot got afire in the chimbley; but we’ve put it out. But if the little lady hadn’t been afther runnin’ down an’ tellin’ me that the wall felt hot, I’m thinkin’ the house wud have been burned to the ground.”

      “Oh, Matthew, are you sure the fire is all out?” asked Miss Dorinda.

      “And are you sure my house would have burned up but for that child?” asked Miss Priscilla.

      “Yis, ma’am, sure as sure! An’ I’ll jist open the windies till the shmoke disappears.”

      Then Miss Priscilla called, “Come down, Ladybird; it’s all right now.” And in a moment the child came flying down-stairs.

      “I put the geranium back in its place,” she said, “and I left your lace handkerchief on your bureau, Aunt Dorinda; but I brought both your smell-salts bottles, ’cause I thought you might be faint from the scare. Now sit down and rest, won’t you?”

      She hovered about her aunts, ministering to each in turn, and her caressing touch was so gentle, and her sympathy so sincere, that Miss Priscilla, who was unaccustomed to such attentions, quite forgot she had called her niece a vixen, and that, too, with good and sufficient reasons.

      But after a while, as her nerves became quieted and she felt more composed, Miss Priscilla Flint determined to attempt again the dismissal of her unwelcome guest.

      “Lavinia,” she said in a tone of firm decision.

      “Oh, aunty, don’t call me that; it makes me feel so old and grown up!”

      “It is your name, and I have no desire to call you by any other. Lavinia, you are my niece, and the child of my dead sister; but I am in no way inclined to take you into my home for that reason. You have some kind and winning ways, but you appear to have an ungovernable temper, which would make you impossible to live with. How dared you lock the door on me in my own house?”

      “Why, aunty,” said Ladybird, laughing at the memory of it, “that wasn’t temper, and I didn’t mean to be rude; but truly, there was nothing else to do. Why, if you had been out on the veranda when my trunks came, you would have sent them back to Boston, and I didn’t want them to go back; so I just left you by yourselves until the man took them up-stairs.”

      “You think you have outwitted me, miss, but you will find that Priscilla Flint is not so easily set aside.”

      “Oh, I’m not going to set you aside, aunty; that isn’t it. I’m just going to stay here and be your little girl – yours and Aunt Dorinda’s.”

      “I think, sister, we might keep her a week on trial,” said Miss Dorinda, timidly.

      Miss Dorinda always said everything timidly. In this respect she was not like her niece.

      “I shall not keep her a week, nor a day; and no more hours than I can help. I am going now to write a note to Mr. Marks, and tell him to come back at once for her and her trunks. So, Miss Lavinia Lovell, you may as well get yourself ready, for this time you will have to go.”

      “Do you know, it doesn’t seem to me as if I would go this time,” said Ladybird, thoughtfully; “it seems to me as if I would stay here years and years, until I get to be a dear old lady like you,” and she patted the top of Miss Priscilla’s head. Then she danced out of the room, and out to the garden, singing as she went:

      “I am not going away to-day;

      I’m going to stay and stay and stay.”

      When the luncheon-bell rang, she danced back again, and seeing a letter on the hall-table addressed to Mr. Marks, she tore it into bits and threw it into the waste basket.

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