he furniture, except such articles as his wife
insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs
which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their
marriage, the Boston rocker her mother had given her, and in which the
old mother had sat until the day she died, the cradle in which she had
rocked her first baby boy who was lying in the Langley grave-yard, were
dear to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she could
have no use for them at Tracy Park, where the furniture was of the
costliest kind, and that she would probably put them in the servants'
rooms or attic, there was enough of sentiment in her nature to make her
cling to them as something of the past, and so they were boxed up and
forwarded by freight to Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed
them a week later.
The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of
Mrs. Frank, who, in her travelling dress of some stuff goods of a
plaided pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste,
felt herself perfectly _au fait_ as the mistress of Tracy Park, until
she reached Springfield, where Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a
tall, elegant looking young lady, entered the car and took a seat in
front of her. Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs.
Atherton at once and guessed that her companion was the young lady from
Collingwood, who, rumor said, was soon to marry her guardian, Mr.
Richard Harrington, although he was old enough to be her father.
Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noting every article of
their costumes from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet
dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty
cars than her buff and purple plaid.
'I ain't like them, and never shall be,' she said to herself, with a
bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. 'I ain't like them,
and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going
to be grand. I shall never get used to it,' and the hot tears sprang to
her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so
hard.
But Dolly did not know then how readily people can forget the life of
toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and
with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment
Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage
waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more
|