Page:Mistress Madcap Surrenders (1926).pdf/102



T BE from John!" announced Mehitable, in atone of quiet but profound satisfaction.

She and Charity were hanging over a note which they had spread open upon the table in Mistress Lindsley's kitchen. Charity, all excited ftutterings from her cap ruffles to the ripples in her linsey-woolsey skirt, had just brought it to her sister from the door, where a messenger had placed it in her hand.

The bright sunshine streaming across the sanded floor, the cheerful snap and crackle of the fire, the home song of the teakettle—all these sounds were in utter contrast to the terror and excitement of those hours a few nights previous, when the ominous dread of intimate warfare had hovered over the house. Now it seemed as though that memory were a bad dream and only hope and happiness could exist.

"Let us tell Cousin Eliza at once!" proposed Charity. "She will be so pleased to know we are invited, Hitty! And then let us look at our party gowns!"