Ethelyn’s hat was laid aside by this time, and the basquine, too, which Andy thought the prettiest coat he had ever seen, and which Eunice, who was bidden to carry Ethelyn’s things away, tried on before the glass in Ethelyn’s chamber, as she did also the hat, deciding that Melinda Jones could make her something like them out of a gray skirt she had at home and one of Tim’s palm-leaf hats.

CHAPTER IX

DINNER, AND AFTER IT

Eunice had not fully seen the stranger, and so, when dinner was announced and Richard led her out, with Andy hovering at her side, she stood ready to be introduced, with the little speech she had been rehearsing about “I hope to see you well,” etc., trembling on the tip of her tongue.  But her plans were seriously disarranged.  Six months before Richard would have presented her himself, as a matter of course; but he had learned some things since then, and he tried not to see his mother’s meaning as she glanced from him to Eunice and then to Ethelyn, whose proud, dignified bearing awed and abashed even her.  Eunice, however, had been made quite too much of to be wholly ignored now, and Mrs. Markham felt compelled to say, “Ethelyn, this—­ah, this is—­Eunice—­Eunice Plympton.”

That Eunice Plympton was the hired girl Ethelyn did not for a moment dream; but that she was coarse and vulgar, like the rest of Richard’s family, she at once decided, and if she bowed at all it was not perceptible to Eunice, who mentally resolved “to go home in the morning if such a proud minx was to live there.”

Mrs. Markham saw the gathering storm, and Richard knew by the drop of her chin that Ethelyn had not made a good impression.  How could she with that proud cold look, which never for an instant left her face, but rather deepened in its expression as the dinner proceeded, and one after the other Mrs. Markham and Eunice left the table in quest of something that was missing, while Andy himself, being nearest the kitchen, went to bring a pitcher of hot water for Ethelyn’s coffee, lifting the kettle with the skirt of his coat, and snapping his fingers, which were slightly burned with the scalding steam.  From the position she occupied at the table Ethelyn saw the whole performance, and had it been in any other house she would have smiled at Andy’s grotesque appearance as he converted his coat skirts into a holder; but now it only sent a colder chill to her heart as she reflected that these were Richard’s people and this was Richard’s home.  Sadly and vividly there arose before her visions of dear Aunt Barbara’s household, where Betty served so quietly and where, except that they were upon a smaller scale, everything was as well and properly managed as in Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s family.  It was several hours since she had tasted food, but she could scarcely swallow a morsel for the terrible homesick feeling swelling in her throat.  She knew the viands before her were as nicely cooked as