"Oh, dear!" she brought up suddenly, flushed and panting.
"What is the matter, Rachel?" Miss Parrott let her hands rest on the yellow
ivory keys and looked over her shoulder at her.
"Oh, I can't dance," said Rachel, "when you play so funnily. It doesn't go
like that; it goes so." She picked up her gown again, and made a sweep off
in one direction, and then in another, her feet scarcely touching the
pictured roses and lilies with which the velvet carpet was strewn, all the
while singing a tune that seemed to carry her off on its own melody. Miss
Parrott turned around on the music-stool, and watched her breathlessly.
It was therefore much later than the parsonage people expected when the old
brougham set Rachel down at their gate, and she walked into the house,
supported on either side by Peletiah and Ezekiel, who had been watching
there a full hour for her arrival.
"I like her," she said, marching up to the minister's wife. "She gave me
these"--putting her hand on the red coral beads on her neck--"and I'm
going back again--to-morrow, I guess."
But it wasn't to stay, that Rachel went back on the morrow; it was only for
a day. Despite all the pleadings made by Miss Parrott, and all the desire
of the parson and his wife to please their honored parishioner, and most of
all, the earnest wish to consent to what would probably be for the child's
best good, they held firmly to the first statement, that nothing could be
arranged till Mrs.
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