Five Little Peppers and their Friends Part 49

"To give to me? Did Mrs. Henderson tell you to give it to me?" asked Miss Parrott, beginning to see light.

"Yes'm. Oh, please let me out," begged Rachel; "I left it in the carriage."

"Ah--well, then, we'll go out this way." And there, turning to the left, was the pa.s.sage down which Rachel had plunged twice before, and at its end, a small green door, that, when opened, led out through an arbor overrun with creepers, to a short cut to the stables.

"Now, then!" Miss Parrott gathered up the train of her black silk gown and put it over her arm; then in full view of the latticed window of the kitchen and scullery department, she sallied forth across the greensward to the stables beyond, Rachel's brown hand tucked in her own.

"Laws a me!" It was the scullery maid who screamed this out. "She's got on Miss Parrott's coral beads."

"You're a ninny!" cried the cook, turning on her in disdain; "go back to your pots and kettles, Ann. Whatever would she have to do with the Mistress's beads? It's some old string you see around her neck."

"It tell you it's Miss Parrott's red beads!" declared Ann stoutly. She might be sent back to her work among the pots and kettles, but she would stick fast to her tale. "I seen 'em when I went up to Miss Parrott's room with the bellows I'd cleaned this very morning, through the little winders to her cupboard, an' I'd know 'em anywhere."

The cook stamped her foot, shaking the crash towel which she still retained, and Ann withdrew to those inner precincts that were considered her department.

Meanwhile, Miss Parrott was talking to Simmons, who, touching his hat respectfully when he saw her approach, now came up to await her commands.

"Have the goodness to open the brougham door, Simmons," said Miss Parrott, going through the carriage house to the corner where that ancient vehicle was stored.

Simmons obeyed wonderingly, with an eye askance at Rachel, by the other side of Miss Parrott, eagerly pressing forward.

"Now jump in," said Miss Parrott, but this command was not needed, for Rachel was already within the family coach and prowling around on the old green leather cushion and over the floor with both nervous hands.

"It isn't--oh, yes, it is!" and up she came, red and shining, to hold out a small, white envelope.

Miss Parrott leaned against the brougham, and broke the seal. Rachel, her whole heart in one glad thrill of joy, made little sign except to heave a deep sigh of relief that the note had been found. Simmons, seeing no excuse for lingering further, went back to one of the carriages to go through the form of inspecting its exterior, while he still kept an eye employed in the direction of his mistress.

"Dear Miss Parrott" (so the note ran), "I really do not think it is wise to ask Rachel to remain over night. I will explain later. Another time, perhaps she may do so. Yours respectfully, Almira Henderson."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott to herself, and, folding up the little note into many creases, she stood lost in thought. "Well, I suppose I must yield to the parson's wife, for she has some good reason. But the child shall stay next time."

Rachel, whose spirits had risen, since it was quite positive that the note was not lost, now seized Miss Parrott's hand and hopped and skipped by her side across the green gra.s.s on their return to the mansion. Simmons came out of his retirement, his chamois skin with which he had been ostensibly polishing up a carriage, still in his hand, to stand in the doorway to watch them.

"Well, I _am_ surprised," he declared, quite slowly and impressively, as befitted a serving-man to an old genteel family.

"Oh, let's go in there," cried Rachel, catching sight of the tall hollyhocks behind a wicket gate and pulling at the long, slender fingers.

Miss Parrott hesitated.

"Well, just one peep," she said, "for it is near to luncheon time," and she pulled out the watch from her belt. But to Rachel "a peep" meant all the world, so she dropped the fingers and raced through the gateway, to get there first and thus make it last as long as possible.

"Oh, oh!" she cried, her little dark face aflame with delight, "it's the most beautiful place." Then she began to run up and down all the narrow paths marking the circles and hearts and diamonds in which the old-fashioned garden was laid out, and sniffing the fragrance as she ran.

Miss Parrott seated herself on a stone seat by the fountain in the center.

Her delight was quite equal to Rachel's, and the thin, wrinkled face a.s.sumed a more peaceful expression than it had carried for many a day, so that when Hooper came to summon her to luncheon, he was fairly taken aback at its unwonted cheer.

"Rachel!" Miss Parrott's voice had a pleasant ring to it. Rachel came dancing along a little curving path, the red coral beads flying up and down on her breast, her cheeks nearly as red. "Oh, it's perfectly beautiful here," she cried.

"Do you like it?" Miss Parrott's thin cheek glowed, too. It carried her back to the day when she as a child had been skipping in that old garden, and her heart gave a throb at the thought that there were perhaps in store for her many delights yet, through Rachel's enjoyment of the old-fashioned flowers and shrubs.

"But come, child," she brought herself up suddenly to say, with a little laugh; "Hooper has summoned us to luncheon, and we must obey."

"Do you have to obey a servant?" asked Rachel, coming out of her dance to fall into step by her side, and looking up with wide-open eyes.

"Always," said Miss Parrott most positively, "else they won't obey me, if I don't. It's system that makes everything comfortable, Rachel."

As Rachel knew nothing whatever about system, she followed silently, her small head full of the beautiful garden in which she had been rioting, and which--oh, joy!--Miss Parrott promised she should visit again, when the luncheon was over. And seated at the polished mahogany table, she was so lost in thought that Miss Parrott, in state at the other end, was obliged to speak to her twice before she looked up.

"Finish your soup, child," said Miss Parrott.

Rachel hadn't even begun it, and she now seized the first thing upon which her hand rested, a heavy silver fork. Hooper, back of his mistress's chair, darted forward to put the right implement before her. But Rachel gave him a withering glance that stopped him half-way. "You don't need to come. I've got it"; and she held up her spoon triumphantly, and ever after, all through the meal, she seemed to view his necessary advances as so many affronts, intended to show up her lack of manners, and she exercised all her wits to keep him at bay. So that the old butler was glad when the meal was over.

But long before that time arrived, Rachel had leaned back in her tall, carved chair, letting her knife and fork rest on her plate, while she feasted her eyes over the table, what it held, and then around the whole apartment.

"There's some of the same flowers like the ones in the garden," she said, bringing her gaze back to point to the old-fashioned silver vase and its nodding cl.u.s.ters in the center of the table. "What are they?"

"Those are larkspur," said Miss Parrott, craning her neck to see around the high silver service from which she poured her tea.

"And what's the other, this side?" Rachel bobbed over on her chair, till Hooper involuntarily closed his eyes, expecting she would go entirely off from her chair, and he didn't want to see it, it would be so disgraceful at a Parrott table.

"That?" Miss Parrott, too, leaned over on her chair. "Oh--why, that's a ragged robin, Rachel."

"_Ragged robin!_" repeated Rachel, hopping off from her chair. "Oh, I want to see it," and she ran around the table-end, and leaned over to get a better view. "'Tisn't a bit ragged," she cried, very much disappointed, "and besides, he isn't there."

"Oh, Rachel!" exclaimed Miss Parrott, in dismay. "You must not do so; we never leave our chairs when we are at the dining-table."

Rachel, thus admonished, scuttled back to her seat, while Hooper groaned and pretended not to see anything. But she kept her black eyes fastened on the ragged robins. "There isn't any bird there," she said.

"What, child?"

"You said there was a robin in those flowers," said Rachel again, using her little brown fingers to designate the vase and its contents, "and that he was ragged, and there isn't any."

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott; then she laughed. "The flowers are called ragged robins, Rachel," she said.

"Oh!" said Rachel; then she laughed, too, a merry little peal, that just bubbled over because she was happy.

"Now eat your luncheon," said Miss Parrott. "Hooper, you may give her some more milk."

"I don't want any more milk," said Rachel, waving him off with quite an air. "I've got lots and lots"--peering into her cup. She took up her knife and fork again, but, looking over them, found so many things to call for more attention than they seemed to be worthy of, that she soon laid them down again upon her plate.

"Where did you used to sit when you was a little girl?" she asked suddenly, when she had been reflecting a bit.

"I? Oh, I sat at the side of the table," said Miss Parrott, starting, as she was thus hastily summoned down into her past.

"Then can't I sit there now?" cried Rachel, flying out of her chair again.

"Say, can't I? Do let me." She ran clear around the table and hung over Miss Parrott's chair.

Hooper groaned again and looked steadfastly out of the opposite window.