And Rachel began to skip around for very joy. She was really to
be a little student, Mr. Henderson had said. Not that Rachel really knew
what that meant exactly, but the master was pleased, and that was enough,
and all of a sudden, when she was putting up some dishes in the
keeping-room closet, she began to sing.
Mrs. Henderson nearly dropped the dish she was wiping.
"Why, my child!" she exclaimed, then stopped, but Rachel didn't hear her,
and sang on. It was a wild little thing that she had heard from the hand
organs and the people singing it in the streets of the big city.
Just then old Miss Parrott's stately, ancestral coach drove up. The
parson's wife hurried to the front door, which was seldom opened except for
special company like the present.
"I heard," said Miss Parrott, as Mrs. Henderson ushered her in, "that you'd
taken a little girl out of charity, and I want to see you and your husband
about it."
"Will you come into his study, then?" said Mrs. Henderson. "Husband has
gone out to work in his garden, and I will call him in."
Miss Parrott stepped into the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk
gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as
befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed
chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat
on, came in hurriedly to know his honored parishioner's bidding.
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