By this time they were all watching the old lady, who was evidently telling Aunt Molly a fearful tale of woe, for she gesticulated angrily; and though the girls could not hear her words, they gazed at her bobbing feathers and her clenched hands in sympathy with her trouble, whatever it might be.
Suddenly Aunt Molly called out: “Come over here, girlies; I want you.”
Over flew the Octave helter-skelter; but they stood up politely enough while Aunt Molly introduced them to her guest.
“Dear Mrs. Lennox,” continued Aunt Molly, “is in a sad dilemma. Only yesterday—but I will ask her to tell you about it herself.”
“Yes, I will tell you,” cried Mrs. Lennox, fairly glaring at the flock of girls, who fell in an expectant group at her feet, “for the tale ought to be blazoned abroad to the four winds of heaven! Gratitude, thou’rt but an empty name! Respect, honor, deference? Chimeras all—chimeras all!”
The girls sat enthralled, though Millicent with difficulty restrained herself from replying to the old lady in kind.
“We are told,” went on Mrs. Lennox, waving her hand dramatically, “that this is a free country! No greater, graver misstatement was ever made. We are slaves!” And she shook her clenched fist at Nan, who chanced to be nearest her, with such a belligerent air that the poor Poet feared she was responsible for the national bondage.
“Slaves!” continued Mrs. Lennox, warming to her subject and waving both arms about. “Slaves to our servants! The time has come when they rule us; they dictate to us; they make the laws and we obey them!”
“Yes’m,” murmured Helen, who thought the ensuing pause ought to be filled somehow.
“And now what have my servants done?” she cried, looking from one young face to another, but too engrossed to notice the various expressions of mirth or bewilderment on each.
As no one was in a position to reply, she continued:
“What have they done? They have left me! Departed, one and all, with no word of warning, no cause for offense.”
“Why did they go?” inquired Betty, who liked to know reasons for things.
“Alas! James, my butler, obtained a fine position in a large hotel in the city, and, viper that he is, he must needs tell all the others of it, and one and all, from the head cook down to the footman, ungratefully left my kind service and followed James to the unknown, untried hardships of a city hotel.”
