CHAPTER IX.
DINNER, AND AFTER IT Eunice had not fully seen the stranger, and so, when dinner was announced and Richard led her out, with Andy hovering at her side, she stood ready to be introduced, with the little speech she had been rehearsing about "I hope to see you well," etc., trembling on the tip of her tongue.

But her plans were seriously disarranged.

Six months before Richard would have presented her himself, as a matter of course; but he had learned some things since then, and he tried not to see his mother's meaning as she glanced from him to Eunice and then to Ethelyn, whose proud, dignified bearing awed and abashed even her.

Eunice, however, had been made quite too much of to be wholly ignored now, and Mrs.Markham felt compelled to say, "Ethelyn, this--ah, this is--Eunice--Eunice Plympton." That Eunice Plympton was the hired girl Ethelyn did not for a moment dream; but that she was coarse and vulgar, like the rest of Richard's family, she at once decided, and if she bowed at all it was not perceptible to Eunice, who mentally resolved "to go home in the morning if such a proud minx was to live there." Mrs.Markham saw the gathering storm, and Richard knew by the drop of her chin that Ethelyn had not made a good impression.

How could she with that proud cold look, which never for an instant left her face, but rather deepened in its expression as the dinner proceeded, and one after the other Mrs.Markham and Eunice left the table in quest of something that was missing, while Andy himself, being nearest the kitchen, went to bring a pitcher of hot water for Ethelyn's coffee, lifting the kettle with the skirt of his coat, and snapping his fingers, which were slightly burned with the scalding steam.