Dick and Dolly

Dick and Dolly, unable to restrain themselves longer, came running in, and met Hannah, who returned, followed by Delia with a bowl of water.

“Hurry up, Hannah,” cried Dick. “She’s in an awful faint! Can’t you bring her to?”

Dolly was dancing around the prostrate form of the visitor, and Michael and Pat were peeping in at the front door.

“Ah, ye scallywags!” cried Delia, realising that some mischief was up. “What are ye up to, now? Who’s this leddy?”

So lifelike was the whole effect of the figure, that Delia could not at first take in the fraud. But when she did, she went off in peals of laughter, and Hannah joined in heartily.

“Aren’t ye the smart scamps, now!” cried Delia, proud of the latest exploit of the children. “An’ will ye look now, Hannah? That’s Miss Rachel’s best blue dress! I’m wonderin’ ye didn’t recognise it!”

“I never thought,” said Hannah, still gazing half-fearfully at the figure on the sofa. “I took it for granted it was a friendly visitor.”

Whereupon Dick outspread Lady Eliza’s arms in such a comical way, that Delia went off again in fresh bursts of laughter.

“Now to fool the aunties,” said Dick, after the servants had returned to their work and Dick and Dolly were left alone with their new possession. “How shall we fix it up, Dollums?”

Dolly considered. She was more ingenious than Dick in arranging dramatic effects, and at last she said:

“I think we’ll just have her seated in a corner of the veranda, and then, when the aunties come home, I’ll tell them there’s a lady waiting to see them.”

“Yes, that’ll be fine; let’s fix her now.”

So Lady Eliza Dusenbury was gracefully seated in a piazza chair. Upon her knees lay an open magazine, held in place with one slender pink hand.

“Those hands give her away, Dolly,” said Dick. “They don’t look a bit real.”

“Neither they don’t,” agreed Dolly; “I’ll get gloves.”

She ran upstairs and down again, bringing a pair of light kid gloves from Aunt Rachel’s room, which she succeeded in getting on the Lady Eliza’s hands.

“That’s a heap better,” said Dick; “now, with the veil, and as its getting sort of darkish, I don’t see how they’ll suspect at all.”

Quietly the Lady Eliza sat waiting. Not quite so quietly, Dick and Dolly sat on the top step of the veranda, waiting also, and at last Michael, who had gone after the Dana ladies, drove them up to the steps.

He had been charged by the twins not to mention their new acquisition, so, of course, had not done so.

Dick and Dolly met their aunts, with a smiling welcome, and then Dolly said:

“There’s a lady to see you, Aunt Rachel; as you weren’t home when she came, she sat down, over there to wait.”

In her pleasant, dignified way, Miss Rachel crossed the veranda, followed by Miss Abbie.

Though the ladies had slightly relaxed their “society” manner when greeting the twins, they instantly assumed it again as they went to meet their visitor.

“Good-afternoon,” said Miss Rachel as she neared the lady reading the magazine.

But the stranger did not look up, and Miss Rachel assumed she had not heard.

“How do you do?” she said, in louder tones, and held out her hand.

Miss Abbie also approached, and said “Good-afternoon,” and extended her hand, but apparently the visitor had no intention of stopping her reading.

With no thought other than that the lady was deaf or exceedingly preoccupied, Miss Rachel stepped nearer, and said very loudly:

“Good-afternoon!”

Still no response, and now Miss Rachel became frightened.

“She has had a stroke or something,” she exclaimed, and, stooping, she peered into the stranger’s face.

“Oh, Abbie! her cheek is hurt! Somebody has struck her, or thrown a stone at her. How dreadful!”

Miss Abbie fluttered about.

“Oh, Rachel! How awful! What shall we do? Call for help, but don’t let the children come here.”

“Yes, let us come,” cried Dick, as he and Dolly danced toward the group. “Let us come, she’s our friend; she’s Lady Eliza Dusenbury.”

“What do you mean?” cried Miss Rachel. “This lady has been hurt somehow. Go and call Hannah. Or perhaps we had better send Michael for a doctor.”

“No, don’t, Aunt Rachel,” said Dolly, who was now shrieking with laughter. “Lady Eliza isn’t much hurt. But isn’t she a dear!”

Dolly threw her arms round the strange lady’s neck, and patted the injured cheek gently. Magazine and shopping bag slid to the floor, but otherwise, the stranger made no motion.

“Dolly, behave yourself!” cried Aunt Abbie. “What do you mean by such actions? Let the poor lady be! Oh, what shall we do, Rachel?”

But Aunt Rachel had begun to see daylight. The irrepressible mirth of the two children told her that there was a joke somewhere, and then, as she recognised her own dress and hat, she suspected the truth.

“H’m,” she said; “suppose we take off the poor lady’s veil, and see how much she is hurt.”

“Suppose we do,” said Dolly, and she obligingly assisted her aunt to remove the veil from Lady Eliza’s beautiful, but scarred face.

“Well!” she exclaimed as she saw the glass eyes and the pink wax face, “what have you two been up to, now?”

As for Aunt Abbie, she sank down on a nearby chair, helpless with laughter.

Then Aunt Rachel followed her example, and Dick and Dolly danced round the three seated figures, while they screamed themselves hoarse with glee.

They moved Lady Eliza’s arms into threatening and despairing poses, each more ridiculous than the other.

They took off her hat, and breaking bunches of wistaria from the veranda vine, they wreathed her golden mop of hair with them.

They took Aunt Rachel’s eyeglasses from the little gold hook on her bodice, and perched them on Lady Eliza’s nose, sticking a pin in the wax to hold them on. And at each ridiculous demonstration the two aunts would become convulsed with laughter.

“Isn’t she lovely!” said Dolly, at last, as she hung around Aunt Rachel’s neck, and watched Dick tie the string of a red balloon to Lady Eliza’s hand, just so that the balloon kept thumping her in the face.

“She is beautiful,” agreed Aunt Rachel, with a shade of mental reservation in her tones. “Where did you get her, and why did you take my newest gown to play with?”