Dick and Dolly

“Yes; walk in the drawing-room. What names?”

“Miss Dana and Mr. Dana,” said Dolly, and was about to explain that they had come to meet their aunts, when the maid disappeared.

She returned to say that Mrs. Hampton would appear presently, and for them to wait.

“’Course we’ll wait,” said Dick to Dolly, as the maid again left them. “The aunties aren’t here on time, after all. P’raps our feet’ll dry before they come.”

“I wish there was a fire. I’m dripping on this pretty light carpet. Dick, let’s go out in the kitchen or some place, and find a fire.”

“All right, come on.”

They left the drawing-room, and as they crossed the hall they saw a bright wood fire in a room across the hall, evidently the library. So they went in, and drawing up two big chairs, they sat down and held their two wet feet to the crackling blaze.

“This is gay,” said Dick, leaning back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “We’ll be all dry in a few minutes, Doll.”

“Yes; but I wish Aunt Rachel would come before Mrs. Hampton comes down. I don’t know her. Do you?”

“Nope; never saw her. But the aunties are bound to be here soon. It’s quarter-past five, now.”

“What are you children doing?” said a voice behind them, and Dick and Dolly jumped from their chairs, and saw a lady coming toward them. She was a very pretty lady, in a trailing silk house gown, and lots of frizzy light hair.

Dolly thought she looked a little like Lady Eliza, and not at all like any of Aunt Rachel’s other friends.

“How do you do?” said Dolly, making her curtsey prettily, while Dick bobbed his head.

“How do you do?” returned Mrs. Hampton, “but who are you?”

“We’re Dolly and Dick Dana,” said Dick, “and our aunties said for us to meet them here at five o’clock. But they don’t seem to be here yet.”

“No; they’re not. Are your aunties Miss Rachel and Miss Abbie Dana?”

“Yes’m; and they said they would call here this afternoon.”

“And they told us if they weren’t here to wait till they came,” said Dolly.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Hampton, looking at her quizzically. “And why are you sitting almost into the fire? It’s a warm day.”

“Yes,” said Dolly, “but you see, we stepped into the fountain as we came along, and so we’re just drying our feet.”

“That’s a very good idea,” and Mrs. Hampton’s smiling eyes were as pleasant as if stepping into fountains was quite usual for her guests. “And so your aunts are coming to call on me?”

“Yes, at five o’clock. But they seem to be late, so, if you please, we’ll wait for them.”

They waited until half-past five, and then until quarter of six, and still the Dana ladies didn’t come. The twins grew very impatient, for it was most irksome to have to sit and talk polite conversation with a grown-up lady.

Mrs. Hampton asked so many questions too. Very impertinent questions they seemed to Dick, though he answered to the best of his ability.

Mrs. Hampton was smiling and pleasant, and seemed interested in hearing about the Dana establishment, but still Dick and Dolly felt uncomfortable, and wished their aunts would come.

At six o’clock Mrs. Hampton said she felt sure the aunts had changed their plans, and were not coming, and she delicately hinted that she would send the twins home.

“No,” said Dick, positively; “we must stay here till they come. Aunt Abbie said to wait, no matter what time it was. And, besides, if they have changed their plans, and are not coming here, they’d send Michael for us, anyway.”

Dolly agreed to this, and the two little martyrs sat for another half-hour.

“Well, if you stay any longer, you must stay to dinner,” said Mrs. Hampton at last. “Do you sit up to dinner at home?”

“We have supper at night,” said Dolly, and her lip quivered a little, for she was beginning to feel anxious about her aunts.

“Well, I have dinner at night, – at eight o’clock.”

“At eight o’clock!” exclaimed Dolly. “Don’t you get awfully hungry before that time?”

“No, I don’t,” said Mrs. Hampton, smiling; “but I’m sure you chickabiddies will. So suppose I give you a nice little supper up in my sitting-room, and excuse you from dinner? I have guests coming, and it isn’t exactly a children’s party, you see.”

“But we’re not going to stay here all night!” exclaimed Dolly in dismay.

“It looks that way to me,” said Mrs. Hampton. “I offered to send you home, and you said no. Now I feel sure your aunts won’t come, – it’s too late for them, and if you’re bound to wait for them, I can offer you supper and pleasant sleeping rooms, – but I can’t invite you to dinner.”

The twins were uncertain what to do. But after all, they had no choice. Aunt Rachel had told them to wait until she came, and Aunt Rachel’s orders were always to be obeyed. To be sure something might have happened to prevent the aunties from carrying out their plan of calling on Mrs. Hampton, but even so, they would have sent for the children. And if they had gone home, they would surely send Michael over for them at once. It wasn’t as if the aunties didn’t know where they were. They had sent them to Mrs. Hampton’s, and told them to wait there. So they waited.

They thought Mrs. Hampton seemed a little annoyed because they waited. But as Dick said to Dolly, “I’m not going to disobey Aunt Rachel for another lady. But all the same, Dollums, I do want to go home.”

“So do I,” said Dolly, “I think it’s horrid here.”

It wasn’t really horrid at all, but to be unwelcome guests in a strange house is not especially pleasant, no matter how pretty the house may be.

The twins had been taken up to Mrs. Hampton’s sitting-room, and in charge of a maid, had been served with a delightful little supper. Bread and milk, jam, fresh strawberries, and dear little cakes, followed by ice cream, made a goodly feast indeed. After it, their spirits rose a little, and they ate their ice cream with smiling faces.

“I think the aunties decided to come this evening instead of afternoon,” said Dick, unable to think of any other explanation.

“They never do make calls in the evening but perhaps that’s it,” said Dolly, doubtfully. “I hear people coming in, Dick, let’s go and look over the banisters.”

Carrying their ice cream plates with them the twins stepped out into the hall and looked over the banisters on the scene below.

It was a fascinating glow of lights and flowers and ladies and gentlemen in evening dress, for the dinner guests had come, and were standing about, engaged in conversation.

Dolly was enchanted with the grand ladies, with jewels in their hair, and with low-necked gowns, and Dick, too, leaned over the banister to see the gay scene. So absorbed were they that they did not heed their melting ice cream, and, almost at the same moment, the soft, cold mass slid from each tipped-up plate, on the heads and shoulders of the ladies and gentlemen below.

Such a shriek of dismay as arose brought Dick and Dolly to a realisation of what they had done, and in an agony of mortification they fled back to the sitting-room.

Here Mrs. Hampton found them, their heads buried in sofa pillows, and crying in muffled paroxysms.

“You must go home,” she said, and her cold, hard tones were more of a reproof than any words could have been. “My coachman will take you, and I wish you to go at once.”

“We wish to go, Mrs. Hampton,” said Dolly, striving to choke back her tears while she made some sort of apology. “We’re very sorry we came, and we’re ’ceeding sorry we spilled the ice cream. It was very good.”

This sounded as if Dolly merely regretted the loss of the dainty, but it was not so. She meant to compliment the supper that had been given them, but, what with their worry over Aunt Rachel’s absence, their own homesickness, and the awful accident of the ice cream, both children were completely upset.