"He has one devil now; Heaven grant that he may return with seven more," she murmured, joyfully.
Two women--two of Mrs. Prymmer's chosen friends and satellites--were calling on Derrice. Mrs. Prymmer had sent a message to her room, and now sat smoothing her white apron, enjoyably anticipating the effect that Derrice's red silk and cashmere gown would produce on her callers, yet at the same time a prey to secret annoyance to think that she herself was only of secondary importance.
To her chagrin, the girl sauntered into the room in a dull brown walking suit, and with a single eyeglass mischievously fixed under one light eyebrow.
Mrs. Prymmer was speechless. Such a thing had never before been heard of in the length and breadth of Rossignol,--that one human being should, through a solitary piece of glass, dare to stare at, examine, and confuse another human being not blessed with a single piece of glass. "The girl was as full of tricks as a monkey," she indignantly reflected.
"Yes," stammered her mother-in-law, recovering her breath, and she waved her hand toward the little dowdy widow in the black bonnet and bead cape, and the young woman in the painful green dress, who was her daughter, and the bride of a carpenter who lived around the corner.
"You have come to see me,--how kind in you," said Derrice, in her infantine manner, and with so much sweetness that the two visitors, who were not of her world and never would be, immediately fell into a profound conviction that they were her friends for life.
The little widow, who was a kind-hearted person, but of limited ideas and education, felt a strange flutter of interest as she regarded the beautiful, gracious girl, and, losing her first fear of the eyeglass, immediately expressed a hope that Derrice felt pretty smart after her journey.
"Oh, yes, thank you, I am used to travelling."
The carpenter's wife, who had, until Derrice's entrance into the room, been troubled with a nervous choking in her throat, now lost all embarrassment, and interrupted a remark of her mother by an eager inquiry as to whether Derrice would "appear out" next Sunday.
Derrice hesitated, and looked at her mother-in-law.
"She means," said Mrs. Prymmer, solemnly, "will you attend divine service? It is the custom for brides."