“As if it is any of his business what I wear,” she thought, and she took a kind of exultant satisfaction in fastening on the knot of ribbon he had condemned and which really was very becoming to her plain, dark dress.

“I suppose, Mr. Grey Jerrold, I must waste a clean collar and a pair of cuffs on you, though that will be so much more for me to iron next week,” she said, as she stood before the mirror in her room, which was to be given to the coming guest, “I hope, sir, you will appreciate all I am doing for you, for I assure you it is no small matter to turn out from my comfortable quarters into that barn of a room where the wind blows a hurricane and the rats scurry over the floor.  Ugh! how I dread it, and you, too!” she continued, shaking her head at the imaginary Grey, who stood before her mind’s eye, black-eyed, black-whiskered, black-faced, and a very giant in proportions, as she fancied all Americans to be.

Her toilet completed, she removed from the room everything which she thought would betray the fact that it was her apartment, and carried them with a shiver to the chamber facing the north, where the rats scurried over the floor at night, and the wind blew a hurricane.

“There!  I am ready for your Pythias!  Do you think I shall pass muster?” she said to Neil, as she entered the dining-room where he was sitting.

It would indeed have been a very censorious, fault-finding man who could have seen aught amiss in the beautiful young girl, plain as her dress might be, and for answer to her question, Neil stood up and kissed her, saying as he did so: 

“He will think you perfect, though I don’t like the ribbon, I don’t like any color about you except your hair and eyes.  I wish you would take it off.”

“Mr. Jerrold may think differently.  I am dressed for him, and as I like it I mean to wear it,” Bessie answered, curtly, but with a bright smile, as she looked into Neil’s face.

“Oh, well; chacun a son gout,” he said, consulting his watch, and adding:  “It is time I was starting for the station; the train is due in fifteen minutes.”

When he was gone Bessie began to feel a little nervous with regard to the stranger coming among them.  Hitherto she had thought only of the extra expense and the trouble he would give old Dorothy, whose feet and ankles were badly swollen and paining her so much.

“I may have to cook and serve the Christmas dinner myself,” she said, “and I don’t mind the work; only I do not want this American from Boston, where the women are so full of brains, to think me a mere dishwasher and chimney-sweep.  I wonder if he is half as nice as Neil says he is, and if I shall like him.  Of course I sha’n’t, but I shall treat him well for Neil’s sake, and be so glad when he has gone.”