Poor Glory colored up, as Mrs. Grabbling might have done if the President's wife had bidden her. Not so, either. With a glow of feeling, and an oppression of gratitude, and a humility of delight, that Mrs. Grubbling, under any circumstances whatever, could have known nothing about.
"If I only can," she managed to utter, "and, anyhow, I'm sure I'm thankful to ye a thousand times."
And that night she sat up in her little attic room, after everybody else was in bed, mending, in a poor fashion, a rent in the faded "best frock," and sewing a bit of cotton lace in the neck thereof that she had picked out of the ragbag, and surreptitiously washed and ironed.
Next morning, she went about her homely tasks with an alacrity that Mrs. Grubbling, knowing nothing of the hope that had been let in upon her dreariness, attributed wholly to the salutary effect of a "good scolding" she had administered the day before. The work she got out of the girl that Thursday forenoon! Never once did Glory leave her scrubbing, or her dusting, or her stove polishing, to glance from the windows into the street, though the market boys, and the waiters, and the confectioners' parcels were going in at the Pembertons' gate, and the man from the greenhouse, even, drove his cart up, filled with beautiful plants for the staircase.
She waited, as in our toils we wait for Heaven--trusting to the joy that was to come.
After dinner, she spoke, with fear and trembling. Her lips turned quite white with anxiety as she stood before Mrs. Grubbling with the baby in her arms.
"Please, mum," says Glory, tremulously, "Katie Ryan asked me over for a little while to-night to look at the party."
Mrs. Grubbling actually felt a jealousy, as if her poor, untutored handmaid were taking precedence of herself.
"At the Pembertons', mum. I thought you knew about it."
"And what if I do? Maybe I'm going, myself."
Glory opened her eyes wide in mingled consternation and surprise.
"I didn't think you was, mum. But if you is----"
"You're willing, I suppose," retorted her mistress, laughing, in a bitter way. "I'm very much obliged. But I'm going out to-night, anyhow, whether it's there or not, and you can't be spared. Besides, you needn't think you're going to begin with going out evenings yet a while. At your age! A pretty thing! There--go along, and don't bother me."