Five Little Peppers Midway | Page 4

Mrs. Whitney distinctly.
"Ah? I see. You are extremely good to put it in that way." A low, well-
bred laugh followed this speech. Its sound irritated the young girl's ear
unspeakably, and the brown eyes flashed, and though there was really
no occasion to feel what was not addressed to her, Polly was quite sure
she utterly disliked the lady before her.

"My dear Mrs. Chatterton," said Mrs. Whitney in the gentlest of
accents, "you do not comprehend; it is not possible for you to
understand how very happy we all are here. The house is quite another
place, I assure you, from the abode you saw last before you went
abroad."
Mrs. Chatterton gave another low, unpleasant laugh, and this time
shrugged her shoulders.
"Polly dear," said Mrs. Whitney with a smile, "say good-morning to
Mrs. Chatterton, and then run away. I will hear your wonderful plan by
and by. I shall be glad to, child," she was guilty of whispering in the
small ear.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Chatterton," said Polly slowly, the brown eyes
looking steadily into the traveled and somewhat seamed countenance
before her.
"Good-morning," and Polly found herself once more across the floor,
and safely out in the hall, the door closed between them.
"Who is she?" she cried in an indignant spasm to Jasper, who ran up,
and she lifted her eyes brimming over with something quite new to him.
He stopped aghast.
"Who?" he cried. "Oh, Polly! what has happened?"
"Mrs. Chatterton. And she looked at me--oh! I can't tell you how she
looked; as if I were a bug, or a hateful worm beneath her," cried Polly,
quite as much aghast at herself. "It makes me feel horridly, Jasper--you
can't think." Oh! that old"--He stopped, pulling himself up with quite an
effort. "Has she come back--what brought her, pray tell, so soon?"
"I don't know, I am sure," said Polly, laughing at his face. "I was only
in the room a moment, I think, but it seemed an age with that eyeglass,
and that hateful little laugh."
"Oh! she always sticks up that thing in her eye," said Jasper coolly,
"and she's everlastingly ventilating that laugh on everybody. She thinks
it high-bred and elegant, but it makes people want to kill her for it." He
looked and spoke annoyed. "To think you fell into her clutches!" he
added.
"Well, who is she?" cried Polly, smoothing down her ruffled feathers,
when she saw the effect of her news on him. "I should dearly love to
know."
"Cousin Algernon's wife," said Jasper briefly.

"And who is he?" cried Polly, again experiencing a shock that this
dreadful person was a relative to whom due respect must be shown.
"Oh! a cousin of father's," said Jasper. "He was nice, but he's dead."
"Oh!" said Polly.
"She's been abroad for a good half-dozen years, and why she doesn't
stay there when everybody supposed she was going to, astonishes me,"
said Jasper, after a moment. "Well, it will not be for long, I presume,
that we shall have the honor; she'll be easily tired of America, and take
herself off again."
"She doesn't stay in this house, does she, Jasper?" cried Polly in a tone
of horror.
"No; that is, unless she chooses to, then we can't turn her off. She's a
relative, you know."
"Hasn't she any home?" asked Polly, "or any children?"
"Home? Yes, an estate down in Bedford County?-Dunraven Lodge; but
it's all shut up, and in the hands of agents who have been trying for the
half-dozen years she was abroad, to sell it for her. She may have come
back to settle down there again, there's no telling what she will do. In
the meantime, I fancy she'll make her headquarters here," he said
gloomily.
"Oh, Jasper!" exclaimed Polly, seizing his arm, feeling that here was
need of comfort indeed, "how very dreadful! Don't you suppose
something will happen to take her away?"
"I don't see what can," said Jasper, prolonging the gloom to feel the
comfort it brought. "You see she has nobody who wants her, to step in
and relieve us. She has two nephews, but oh! you ought to see them
fight!"
"Fight?" repeated Polly aghast.
"Yes; you can't dignify their skirmishes by any other name," said Jasper,
in disgust. "So you see our chances for keeping her as long as she
condescends to stay are really very good."
Polly clung to his arm in speechless dismay. Meanwhile conversation
fast and brisk was going on between the two shut up in the library.
"It is greatly to your discredit, Marian," said Mrs. Chatterton in a high,
cold voice, "that you didn't stop all this nonsense on your father's part,
before the thing got to such a pass as to install them in this