After our early dinner, I said I was a little tired;
and she drove with her husband. I took out my paper, brushes, and
palette, set Nelly's nosegay in a becoming light, and began to rub my
paints; when wheels and hoofs came near and stopped, and presently the
door-bell rang.
"Are the ladies at home?" asked a smooth, silvery, feminine voice, with
a peculiarly neat, but unaffected enunciation.
"No'm, he ain't," returned the portress, mechanically; "an' he's druv
Missis out, too. Here's the slate; or Miss Kitty could take a message, I
s'pose, without she's went out lately ago."
"Take this card," resumed the first voice, "if you please, to Miss
Morne, and say that, if she is not engaged, I should be glad to see
her."
I rose in some confusion, pushed my little table into the darkest corner
of the room, received the white card from Rosanna's pink paw, in which
it lay like cream amidst five half-ripe Hovey's seedlings, read "Miss
Dudley" upon it, told Rosanna to ask her to please to walk in, and took
up my position just within the door, in a state of some palpitation.
In another minute a gray-haired, rather tall and slight, and very
well-made lady, with delicate, regular, spirited features, was before
me, telling me with a peculiar kind of earnest cordiality, and a
sympathy that expressed itself fully in tones, though not in words, that
she could not content herself with writing her acknowledgments to me;
she must come and see me herself, to tell me how pleased and gratified
and touched she was by the offering that I had sent her.
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