Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/103

Rh dusted the dresser, and cleaned the celery, and taken the pin-feathers out of the ducks."

"Lucy!" called David from the top of the stairs, "just rub over the table-spoons and silver forks for me—that's you, Lucy." Poor, Lucy with a sigh, proceeded to the task. Before it was done Mary's bell rung, and Lucy had to run to the thread and needle store for something the seamstress must have. On her return she met Sophy—"Oh, Lucy!" she said, "you must put Mrs. Ardley's room up—she has sent me to the dressmaker's." "Lucy!" called out from the upper entry Miss Anne, "just come and sew on my shoestrings for me; Mary Minturn is busy." "Lucy!" screamed Master Will Ardley, "ask David for my boots, and bring them up." "Lucy!" piped a little urchin from the nursery door, "mamma says you may come and set up the soldiers I shoot down." "No, no, Lucy!" cried in the same breath Belle Ardley, "mamma says you may iron my doll's frock first!" Lucy, secretly resolving that if she ever enlisted in another service, it should not be for "odds and ends,"patiently threaded her way through, and then presented herself, cloaked and hooded, to Mrs. Ardley, and asked not "if she might go," but "how long she might stay." "Oh, Lucy, child—I am really sorry! I forgot to tell you that you cannot possibly go to-day. Wilson" (Wilson was the wet-nurse) "says she must go out—and you know it is as much as my life is worth to refuse Wilson."

"But cannot Mrs. Wilson come home in time for me?"

No—she will not be in till after dinner, and then it will be too late for you—quite dark."