Part 3 (2/2)
By this time, Willie, feeling deeply injured, began to bellow, and Lizzie was obliged to drive twice around the big wood-pile, in the center of the yard, to pacify him.
Mrs. Royden met Chester in the doorway, and kissed him affectionately.
She proposed half a dozen leading questions with regard to his conduct, his health and his designs, almost in a breath; all of which he answered equivocally, or postponed altogether.
”Where is Hepsy?” he asked, throwing himself on a chair, and wiping the sweat from his fine forehead with a perfumed handkerchief.
”She'll come soon enough,” replied his mother, in a disagreeable tone.
”Have _you_ got to using _perfumes_, Chester?”
The young man flirted his handkerchief, smiling disdainfully, and said he ”supposed he had.”
”For my part, I think they are very nice,” added the admiring Sarah.
”Do you, Sis? Well, you shall have as much of them as you want, when my trunks come.”
”Where are your trunks?” asked Mrs. Royden.
”At the tavern. I was in a hurry to come home; so I hired a saddle and galloped over the road. Let one of the boys harness up, and go for the luggage.”
”Why, your father has gone to the village himself. Didn't you meet him?”
”No; he must have gone by the west road. I wonder if he will stop at the tavern? If he does, the landlord will tell him my traps are there.”
”I presume he will go to the tavern, child. We are expecting his cousin Rensford, the clergyman, to-day, and your father went as much to bring him over as anything.”
”Pshaw! the old minister?” cried Chester. ”How long is he going to stay?”
”I hope not a great while,” said Sarah. ”Anything but a minister--out of the pulpit.”
”He'll just spoil my visit,” rejoined her brother. ”He has been here, hasn't he? I think I remember seeing him, when I was about so high,”
measuring off the door-post.
”He spent the night here, several years ago; but we don't know much about him, only by hearsay. He's a very good man, we are told,” said Mrs. Royden, with a sigh; ”but how we are going to have him in the family, I don't know.”
Chester changed the topic of conversation by once inquiring for Hepsy.
The girl did not make her appearance; and he expressed a desire to ”see a basin of water and a hair-brush.”
”You shall have the parlor bedroom,” said Sarah.
”But if Mr. Rensford comes--” suggested her mother.
”O, he can go up-stairs.”
”I won't hear to that!” cried Chester. ”Give the old man the luxuries. I want to see the inside of my old room again.”
”But Hepsy and the children have that room now.”
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