"prudence," said her sister with a stern accent, "please try not to be a fool.you brushed the cup off with the sleeve of your dress.""your theory wouldn't be so bad," said miss prudence, half laughing and half crying, "if there were any sleeves to my dress, but, as you see, there aren't," and then miss prudence had something as near hysterics as a healthy young woman from the west can have.
"i wouldn't think such a perfect lady as lydia carew," she ejaculated between her sobs, "would make herself so disagreeable!
you may talk about good-breeding all you please, but i call such intrusion exceedingly bad taste.i have a horrible idea that she likes us and means to stay with us.she left those other people because she did not approve of their habits or their grammar.it would be just our luck to please her.""well, i like your egotism," said miss boggs.
however, the view miss prudence took of the case appeared to be the right one.time went by and miss lydia carew still remained.
when the ladies entered their drawing-room they would see the little lady-like daguerro-type revolving itself into a blur before one of the family portraits.or they noticed that the yellow sofa cushion, toward which she appeared to feel a peculiar antipathy, had been dropped behind the sofa upon the floor, or that one of jane austen's novels, which none of the family ever read, had been re-moved from the book shelves and left open upon the table.
"i cannot become reconciled to it," com-
plained miss boggs to miss prudence."i
wish we had remained in iowa where we belong.of course i don't believe in the thing! no sensible person would.but still i cannot become reconciled."but their liberation was to come, and in a most unexpected manner.
a relative by marriage visited them from the west.he was a friendly man and had much to say, so he talked all through dinner, and afterward followed the ladies to the draw-ing-room to finish his gossip.the gas in the room was turned very low, and as they entered miss prudence caught sight of miss carew, in company attire, sitting in upright propriety in a stiff-backed chair at the extremity of the apartment.