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IT lacked ten minutes of car-time, and the omnibus-driver
was growing impatient and tired of
waiting for his passenge, when a noisy group
appeared upon the piazza: Mrs. Squire Russell, pale,
languid, drooping as usual, with a profusion of long
light curls falling in her eyes, and giving to her faded
face the appearance of a poodle dog; Mr. Squire Russell,
short, fat, hen-pecked, but very good-looking withal,
and some half dozen little Russells, clinging to and jumping
upon the young lady, whom we recognize at once as
Dora, our heroine.

“You won't stay long, even if Mrs. Randall does
urge you,” said Mrs. Russell, in a half-complaining tone as
she drew together her white wrapper, and leaned wearily
against a pillar of the piazza. “You know I can't do
anything with the children, and the hot weather makes
me so miserable. I shall expect you in two weeks.”

“Two weeks, Madge! are you crazy?” said the
Squire's good-humored voice. “Dora has not been from
home in ages, while you have almost made the tour of
the Western Continent. She shall stay as long as she

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likes, and get some color in her face. She used to be
rosier than she is now, and it all comes of her being shut
up so close with the children.”

“I think it is very unkind in you, Mr. Russell, to
speak as if I was the worst sister in the world, and the
most exacting. I am sure Dora don't think so. Didn't
she go with us to Newport last summer, and wasn't she
more than once called the belle of the Ocean House?”

John gave a queer kind of whistle, while Dora involuntarily
drew a long breath as she remembered the
dreary time she had passed at the Ocean House, looking
after three nurses, six children, and her sister Margaret,
whose rooms were on the third floor, and to whom she
had acted the part of waiting-maid in general. But her
thoughts were suddenly brought back from Newport by
Margaret's next remark:

“You needn't charge the loss of her roses to me
either, John. No one can expect to be young-looking
forever, and you must remember Dora has passed the
bloom of youth. She's in her twenty-sixth year.”

“Twenty-sixth year! Thunder! that's nothing,” and
Squire Russell tossed up in the air the little Daisy crawling
at his feet, while Johnnie, the ten-year old boy,
roared out:

“Aunt Dora ain't old. She's real young and pretty,
and so Dr. West told Miss Markham that time she
counted on her fingers, and said, so spiteful like: `Yes,

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Miss Freeman is full thirty. Why, they've been here
eleven years, and she must have been nineteen or twenty
when she came, for she was quite as big as she is now,
and looked as old. Yes, she's too old for the new minister,
Mr. Kelley.' I was so mad I could have knocked
her, and I did throw a brick at her parrot squawking in
the yard. Dr. West was as red as fire, and said to her
just as he spoke to me once, when he made me hold still
to be vaccinated, `Miss Freeman is not thirty. She
does not look twenty, and is perfectly suitable for Mr.
Kelley, if she wants him.'

“`She don't,' says I, `for she don't see him half the
time when he calls, nor Dr. Colby either.'

“I was going to spit out a lot more stuff, when Dr.
West put his hand to my mouth, and told me to hush
up.”

There were roses now on Dora's cheeks, and they made
her positively beautiful as she kissed her sister and the
little ones good-by, glancing nervously across the broad,
quiet street to where a small, white office was nestled
among the trees. But though the blinds were down, the
door was not opened, while around the house in the
same yard there were no signs of life except at an upper
window, where a head, which was unmistakably that of
Dr. West's landlady, Mrs. Markham, was discernible behind
the muslin curtain. He was not coming to say
good-by, and with a feeling of disappointment Dora

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walked rapidly to the omnibus, which bore her away from
the house where they missed her so much, Squire John
looking uncomfortable and desolate, the children growing
very cross, and at last crying, every one of them, for
auntie; while Margaret took refuge from the turmoil behind
one of her nervous headaches, and went to her room,
wondering why Dora must select that time of all others
to leave her.

p605-024

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