Ethelyn’s appetite had improved since the previous night, and she did ample justice to the well-cooked dinner; but her spirits were ruffled again when, on returning to her room an hour or so after dinner, she found it in the same disorderly condition in which she had left it.  Ethelyn had never taken charge of her own room, for at Aunt Barbara’s Betty had esteemed it a privilege to wait upon her young mistress, while Aunt Van Buren would have been horror-stricken at the idea of any one of her guests making their own bed.  Mrs. Markham, on the contrary, could hardly conceive of a lady too fine to do that service herself, and Eunice was not the least to blame for omitting to do what she had never been told was her duty to do.  A few words from Richard, however, and the promise of an extra quarter per week made that matter all right, and neither Betty nor Mrs. Dr. Van Buren’s trained chambermaid, Mag, had ever entered into the clearing-up process with greater zeal than did Eunice when once she knew that Richard expected it of her.  She was naturally kind-hearted, and though Ethelyn’s lofty ways annoyed her somewhat, her admiration for the beautiful woman and her elegant wardrobe was unbounded, and she felt a pride in waiting upon her which she would once have thought impossible to feel in anything pertaining to her duties as a servant.

The following morning brought with it the opening of the box where the family presents were; but Ethelyn did not feel as much interest in them now as when they were purchased.  She knew how out of place they were, and fully appreciated the puzzled expression on James’ face when he saw the blue velvet smoking cap.  It did not harmonize with the common clay pipe he always smoked on Sunday, and much less with the coarse cob thing she saw him take from the kitchen mantel that morning just after he left the breakfast table and had donned the blue frock he wore upon the farm.  He did not know what the fanciful-tasseled thing was for; but he reflected that Melinda, who had been to boarding school, could enlighten him, and he thanked his pretty sister with a good deal of gentlemanly grace.  He was naturally more observing than Richard, and with the same advantages would have polished sooner.  Though a little afraid of Ethelyn, there was something in her refined, cultivated manners very pleasing to him, and his soft eyes looked down upon her kindly as he took the cap and carried it to his room, laying it carefully away in the drawer where his Sunday shirts, and collars, and “dancing pumps,” and fishing tackle, and paper of chewing tobacco were.

Meanwhile, John, who was even more shy of Ethelyn than James, had been made the recipient of the elegantly embroidered slippers, which presented so marked a contrast to his heavy cowhides, and were three sizes too small for his mammoth feet.  Ethelyn saw the discrepancy at once, and the effort it was for John to keep from laughing outright, as he took the dainty things into which he could but little more than thrust his toes.