Bunner Sisters | Page 9

for mercy's sake!
Miss Mellins has been took again."
Miss Mellins was the dress-maker upstairs, and the weak-eyed child
one of her youthful apprentices.
Ann Eliza started from her seat. "I'll come at once. Quick, Evelina, the
cordial!"

By this euphemistic name the sisters designated a bottle of cherry
brandy, the last of a dozen inherited from their grandmother, which
they kept locked in their cupboard against such emergencies. A
moment later, cordial in hand, Ann Eliza was hurrying upstairs behind
the weak-eyed child.
Miss Mellins' "turn" was sufficiently serious to detain Ann Eliza for
nearly two hours, and dusk had fallen when she took up the depleted
bottle of cordial and descended again to the shop. It was empty, as
usual, and Evelina sat at her pinking-machine in the back room. Ann
Eliza was still agitated by her efforts to restore the dress-maker, but in
spite of her preoccupation she was struck, as soon as she entered, by the
loud tick of the clock, which still stood on the shelf where she had left
it.
"Why, she's going!" she gasped, before Evelina could question her
about Miss Mellins. "Did she start up again by herself?"
"Oh, no; but I couldn't stand not knowing what time it was, I've got so
accustomed to having her round; and just after you went upstairs Mrs.
Hawkins dropped in, so I asked her to tend the store for a minute, and I
clapped on my things and ran right round to Mr. Ramy's. It turned out
there wasn't anything the matter with her-- nothin' on'y a speck of dust
in the works--and he fixed her for me in a minute and I brought her
right back. Ain't it lovely to hear her going again? But tell me about
Miss Mellins, quick!"
For a moment Ann Eliza found no words. Not till she learned that she
had missed her chance did she understand how many hopes had hung
upon it. Even now she did not know why she had wanted so much to
see the clock-maker again.
"I s'pose it's because nothing's ever happened to me," she thought, with
a twinge of envy for the fate which gave Evelina every opportunity that
came their way. "She had the Sunday-school teacher too," Ann Eliza
murmured to herself; but she was well-trained in the arts of
renunciation, and after a scarcely perceptible pause she plunged into a
detailed description of the dress-maker's "turn."

Evelina, when her curiosity was roused, was an insatiable questioner,
and it was supper-time before she had come to the end of her enquiries
about Miss Mellins; but when the two sisters had seated themselves at
their evening meal Ann Eliza at last found a chance to say: "So she on'y
had a speck of dust in her."
Evelina understood at once that the reference was not to Miss Mellins.
"Yes--at least he thinks so," she answered, helping herself as a matter
of course to the first cup of tea.
"On'y to think!" murmured Ann Eliza.
"But he isn't SURE," Evelina continued, absently pushing the teapot
toward her sister. "It may be something wrong with the--I forget what
he called it. Anyhow, he said he'd call round and see, day after
to-morrow, after supper."
"Who said?" gasped Ann Eliza.
"Why, Mr. Ramy, of course. I think he's real nice, Ann Eliza. And I
don't believe he's forty; but he DOES look sick. I guess he's pretty
lonesome, all by himself in that store. He as much as told me so, and
somehow"--Evelina paused and bridled--"I kinder thought that maybe
his saying he'd call round about the clock was on'y just an excuse. He
said it just as I was going out of the store. What you think, Ann Eliza?"
"Oh, I don't har'ly know." To save herself, Ann Eliza could produce
nothing warmer.
"Well, I don't pretend to be smarter than other folks," said Evelina,
putting a conscious hand to her hair, "but I guess Mr. Herman Ramy
wouldn't be sorry to pass an evening here, 'stead of spending it all alone
in that poky little place of his."
Her self-consciousness irritated Ann Eliza.
"I guess he's got plenty of friends of his own," she said, almost harshly.

"No, he ain't, either. He's got hardly any."
"Did he tell you that too?" Even to her own ears there was a faint sneer
in the interrogation.
"Yes, he did," said Evelina, dropping her lids with a smile. "He seemed
to be just crazy to talk to somebody--somebody agreeable, I mean. I
think the man's unhappy, Ann Eliza."
"So do I," broke from the elder sister.
"He seems such an educated man, too. He was reading the paper when I
went in. Ain't it sad to think of his being reduced to that little store,
after being years