“I had it for a Christmas gift the year he was nine,” she said.  Mary’s calendar ran from The Year of the Governor, 1.  “He had whooping-cough just after that, and was ill seven weeks.  Dear me, what teeny little feet you have!” as she put on them the dressing-slippers from the bag, and struggled up to her own, heavily but cheerfully.

Lindsay looked at her thoughtfully.  “You haven’t mentioned the Governor’s wife,” she said.  “Isn’t she at home?” and she leaned over to pull up the furry heel of the little slipper.  So that she missed seeing Mary Mooney’s face.  Expression chased expression over that smiling landscape—­astonishment, perplexity, anxiety, the gleam of a new-born idea, hesitation, and at last a glow of unselfish kindliness which often before had transfigured it.

“No, Miss Lee,” said Mary.  “She’s away from home just now.”  And then, unblushingly, “But she’s a lovely lady, and she’ll be very disappointed not to see you.”

Almost the next thing Lindsay knew she was watching dreamily spots of sunlight that danced on a pale pink wall.  Then a bird began to sing at the edge of the window; there was a delicate rustle of skirts, and she turned her head and saw a maid—­not Mary Mooney this time—­moving softly about, opening part way the outside shutters, drawing lip the shades a bit, letting the light and shadow from tossing trees outside and the air and the morning in with gentle slowness.  She dressed with deliberation, and, lo! it was a quarter after nine o’clock.

So that the Governor waited for his breakfast.  For ten minutes, while the paper lasted, waiting was unimportant; and then, being impatient by nature, and not used to it, he suddenly was cross.

“Confound the girl!” soliloquized the Governor.  “I’ll have her indicted too!  First she breaks up a meeting, then she gets the horses out at all hours, and now, to cap it, she makes me wait for breakfast.  Why should I wait for my breakfast?  Why the devil can’t she—­Now, Mary, what is it?  I warn you I’m cross, and I shan’t listen well till I’ve had breakfast.  I’m waiting for that young lady you’re coddling.  Where’s that young lady?  Why doesn’t she—­What?”

For the flood-gates were open, and the soft verbal oceans of Mary were upon him.  He listened two minutes, mute with astonishment, and then he rose up in his wrath and was verbal also.

“What!  You told her I was married?  What the dev—­And you’re actually asking me to tell her so too?  Mary, are you insane?  Embarrassed?  What if she is embarrassed?  And what do I care if—­What?  Sweet and pretty?  Mary, don’t be an idiot.  Am I to improvise a wife, in my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor?  Not if I know it.  Not much.”  The Governor bristled with indignation.  “Confound the girl, I’ll—­” At this point Mary, though portly, vanished like a vision of the night, and there stood in the doorway a smiling embodiment of the morning, crisp in a clean shirt-waist, and free from consciousness of crime.