Her dancing eyes told him how she would like it, and Charles was sent to the stable with an order to have the little pony phaeton brought round as soon as possible as he was going for a drive.

CHAPTER XIX.

ARTHUR’S PLAN

’Why, the madam is going to drive, too, and I’ve come to harness; there’ll be a row somewhere,’ John said.

‘Can’t help it,’ Charles replied, ’Mr. Arthur wants the phaeton, and will have it for all of Madam.’

‘Yes, I s’p’o’ so.  Wall, I’ll go and tell her,’ was John’s rejoinder, as he started for the house, where Mrs. Tracy was just drawing on her long driving gloves, and admiring her new hat and feather before the glass.

Dolly looked almost as young, and far prettier, than when the came to the park, eleven years before.  A life of luxury suited her.  She had learned to take things easily, and the old woman with the basket might now come every day to her kitchen door without her knowing it.  She aped Mrs. Atherton of Brier Hill, in everything, and had the satisfaction of knowing that she was on all occasions quite as stylish-looking and well-dressed as that aristocratic lady whom she called her intimate friend.  She had also grown very proud and very exclusive in her ideas, and when poor Mrs. Peterkin, who was growing, too, with her million, ventured to call at the park, the call was returned with a card which Doily’s coachman left at the door.  Since the night of her party, and the election which followed when Frank was defeated, she had ignored the Peterkins, and laughed at what she called their vulgar imitation of people above them, and when she heard that Mary Jane hail hired a governess for her two children, Bill and Ann Eliza, she scoffed at the airs assumed by come-up people, and wondered if Mrs. Peterkin had forgotten that she was one of Grace Atherton’s hired girls.  Dolly had certainly forgotten the Langley life, and was to all intents and purposes the great lady of the park, who held herself aloof from the common herd, and taught her children to do the same.

She had seen Jerry enter the house that morning with a feeling of disapprobation, which had not diminished as the day wore on and still the child staid, and what was worse, Maude was not sent for to join her.

‘Not that I would have allowed it, if she had been,’ she said to herself, for she did not wish her daughter intimate with one of whose antecedents nothing was known, but Arthur might at least have invited her.  He had never noticed her children much, and this she deeply resented.  Maude, who knew of Jerry’s presence in the house had cried to go in and play with her, but Mrs. Tracy had refused, and promised as an equivalent a drive in the phaeton around the town.  And it was for this drive Dolly was preparing herself, when John came with the message that she could not have the phaeton, as Mr. Arthur was going to take Jerry home in it.