Page:A Little Country Girl - Coolidge (1887).djvu/73

 had not come after all. The day was brilliantly fair. Long fingers of sunshine were feeling their way through the tree-branches, seeking out shady corners and giving caressing touches to all growing things. A book lay on the window-bench. It was "A York and a Lancaster Rose," which little Marian had been reading the night before. It looked interesting, and, seeing by a glance at the tall clock in the hall below that it was but a little after seven, Candace settled herself for a long, comfortable reading before breakfast.

Mrs. Gray was the first of the family to appear. She swept rapidly downstairs in her pretty morning wrapper of pale pink, with a small muslin cap trimmed with ribbons of the same shade on her glossy black hair, and paused to give Cannie a rapid little kiss; but she looked preoccupied, and paid no further attention to her, beyond a kind word or two, till breakfast was over, the orders for the day given, half a dozen notes answered, and half a dozen persons seen on business.