Elsie's Vacation and After Events Part 15

"She said she must hurry back to her lessons, mamma," answered Grace, blushing for her sister. "You see she stopped to help me get ready, and I suppose she's afraid she'll not know them well by the time papa wants to hear her recite."

"It would have taken very little of her time," the captain remarked, with a grave and somewhat displeased look.

"Oh, well, you can bring her over to Ion, perhaps this afternoon or to-morrow, for a call, Levis," Violet hastened to say in a cheery tone.

"Possibly," he answered, and was about to step into the carriage when a servant came hurrying up to ask directions in regard to some work to be done in the grounds.

"My dear," said the captain to Violet, "I think it would be better for you and the children to drive on without waiting for me. I shall probably follow you in another hour or two."

"Very well; please don't disappoint us if you can help it," returned Violet, and the carriage drove on, while Captain Raymond walked away in the opposite direction, to give the needed orders to his men.

"I think it's a shame that I should be left behind when all the rest of the family are going to Ion to have a good time," muttered Lulu angrily, as she seated herself at her desk again and opened a book. "Papa could hear my lessons there just as well as here if he chose, and Mamma Vi might have arranged to have my dresses made a week or two later."

"Miss Lu," said Agnes, opening the door and putting in her head, "Miss Alma tole me for to tell you she's 'bout ready fo' to try on yo' new dress."

"Tell her to take it to my room. I'll go up there to have it tried on,"

replied Lulu, in a vexed, impatient tone.

Then, as Agnes withdrew her head and closed the door, "Horrid thing! why couldn't she have come to me while I was up there? Here I am, hardly fairly settled to my work, and I must drop it and go back again. I'd better take my book with me, for there's no knowing how long she may keep me while she alters something that she has got wrong, for she's generally too stupid to make a thing right at the first trial. Well, perhaps she'll get done by the time papa comes back and is ready to hear me recite."

So saying she went slowly from the school room and upstairs to her own apartment.

There were a few minutes of waiting for Alma, which did not improve Lulu's temper, and as the girl came in she received an angry glance, accompanied by the remark, in no very pleasant tones, that she had no business to send for people till she was ready to attend to them.

At that Alma colored painfully. "I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, Miss Lu," she said, "but I'll try not to keep you so very long."

"If you don't, it will be about the first time that you haven't,"

snapped Lulu. "I think you are just about the slowest, most blundering dressmaker I ever did see."

At that unkind remark, Alma's eyes filled with tears, but she went on silently with her work, making no rejoinder, while Lulu--the reproaches of conscience rendering her uneasy and irritable--fidgetted and fussed, thus greatly increasing the difficulty of the task.

"Miss Lu," Alma said at last, in a despairing tone, "if you can't keep stiller, it is not possible for me to make the dress to fit you right."

"Indeed!" returned Lulu scornfully, "I don't feel sure of your ability to fit it right under any circ.u.mstances--such a stupid, awkward thing as you are, and----"

Her sentence was left unfinished, for at that instant, to her astonishment and dismay, her father's voice called to her from his dressing-room, in sterner accents than she had heard from him in a long while. "Lucilla, come here to me!" She had not known of his detention at home, but supposed he had gone with the others to Ion.

Jerking off the waist, which Alma had already unfastened,--s.n.a.t.c.hing up a dressing-sack and putting it on as she went,--she appeared before him, blushing and shamefaced.

"I am both surprised and mortified by what I have just overheard," he said. "I had a better opinion of my dear, eldest daughter than to suppose she would ever show herself so heartless. You surely must have forgotten that poor Alma is a stranger, in a strange land, while you are at home, in your father's house. Go to her now, and apologize for your rudeness."

Lulu made no movement to obey, but stood before him in sullen silence and with downcast, scowling countenance.

He waited a moment; then said sternly, "Lucilla, you will yield instant obedience to my order, or go immediately to your own room, and not venture into my presence again until you can tell me you have obeyed."

At that she turned and left the room, more angry and rebellious than she had ever been since that dreadful time at Ion when her indulgence in a fit of pa.s.sion had so nearly cost little Elsie's life.

"Papa will have a pretty time making me do it," she muttered angrily to herself, as she stood by a window in her bedroom looking out into the grounds. "Ask Alma's pardon, indeed! She's not even a lady; she's nothing but a poor woman, who has to support herself with her needle,--or rather with a sewing machine, and cutting and fitting,--and I think it's just outrageous for papa to tell me I must ask her pardon.

I'll not do it, and papa needn't think he can make me, though----" she added, uneasily, the next minute, "to be sure, he always has made me obey him; but I'm older now; too old, I think, even he would say, to be whipped into doing what I don't choose to do.

"But he forbade me to come into his presence till I obeyed, and--oh, dear, I can't live that way, because I love him so--better than any one else in all the wide world; and--and--it would just kill me to have to go without his love and his caresses; never to have him hug and kiss me, and call me his dear child, his darling. Oh, I couldn't bear it! I never could! it would just break my heart!" and her tears began to fall like rain.

She cried quite violently for a while; then began to think of Alma more kindly and pityingly than ever before, as an orphan and a stranger in a strange land.

"Oh, I am ashamed to have treated her so!" she exclaimed at length, "and I will ask her pardon; not only because papa has ordered me to do so, but because I am sorry for her, and really mortified to think of having treated her so badly."

Fortunately, just at that moment Alma's timid rap was heard at the door and her voice saying, in a hesitating, deprecating way, "Miss Lu, please, I need to try the dress once more. I'm very sorry to disturb and trouble you, but I know you want it to be a good fit."

"Yes, of course I do, Alma," returned Lulu gently, opening the door as she spoke; "you are quite right to come back with it. I'm sorry and ashamed of having been so rude and unkind to you when you were in here before," she added, holding out her hand. "It was shameful treatment.

Papa said I must ask your pardon, and I think I would do it now, even if he hadn't ordered me."

"It is too much, Miss Lu," Alma said, blushing, and with tears in her eyes. "I could never ask such a thing as that of a young lady like you."

"Indeed, my behavior has been very unladylike to-day," sighed Lulu; "and papa is very, very much displeased with me."

"I am sorry, Miss," Alma responded, in a sympathizing tone. "But the captain will not stay angry; he is so very fond of his children."

"Yes; and so kind and indulgent that I ought to be the best girl in the world. Oh, I wish I had not behaved so badly!"

"He will forgive you, Miss; he will not stay displeased, for his love for you is so very great," returned Alma. "There, Miss, the dress does fit you now. See in the gla.s.s. Does it not?"

"Yes," Lulu replied, surveying herself in the mirror; "I could not ask a better fit, Alma."

"It is lovely, Miss Lu; the stuff so fine and soft, and the colors so beautiful!" remarked the girl, gazing upon it with admiring eyes. "It is good, Miss Lu, to have a kind papa, rich enough to gif you all things needful for a young lady to wear."

"Yes, and so generous and kind as mine is," sighed Lulu. "It is a very great shame that I ever do anything to displease him."

Alma went back to the sewing-room, and Lulu hastened to the door of the room where her father had been when he called to her. But a glance within showed her that he was not there now. Then she ran downstairs and through library, parlors, halls,--everywhere,--looking for him.

"Oh, where is he?" she sighed. "I must find him and tell him how sorry I am for my naughtiness. I can't have one minute of happiness till I have done so and got a kiss of forgiveness."

s.n.a.t.c.hing a hat from the rack and putting it on as she went, she ran out and round the porches and the grounds; but nowhere was he to be seen.

"Miss Lu," called a servant, at length, "is you lookin' fo' de cap'n?

He's done gone to Ion, I 'spects; kase dere's whar Miss Wi'let went in de kerridge."

"Did he say when he would come back?" asked Lulu, steadying her voice with quite an effort.

"He gwine come back dis evenin' fo' suah, Miss Lu, to see 'bout de work on de plantation," was the reply, as the man turned to his employment again. And with a heavy sigh Lulu turned about and re-entered the house.

"Oh, it's so lonesome for me here all by myself!" she said half-aloud.

But there was no one near enough to hear her, and she went back to her tasks, trying to forget her troubles in study; an effort in which she was for the time partially successful.

CHAPTER X.