Page:A Little Country Girl - Coolidge (1887).djvu/53

 It's almost faded out; you can hardly see the face."

"What a pity!"

"Le dîner est servi, Madame," said the voice of Frederic at the door.

"We won't wait for the girls. They will be down in a moment," said Mrs. Gray, as she led the way to the dining-room. The sound of their feet on the staircase was heard as she spoke; and down they ran, the elder two in pretty dresses of thin white woollen stuff, which Candace in her unworldliness thought fine enough for a party.

People in North Tolland did not dine in the modern sense of the word. They took in supplies of food at stated intervals, very much as a locomotive stops for wood and water when it cannot go on any longer without such replenishment; but it was a matter of business and necessity to do so rather than of pleasure.

Candace, who had sat down opposite Aunt Myra every day as long as she could remember at the small pine table in the yellow