Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/241

Rh Look here, I wish you'd not keep appearing so suddenly. It does startle me so.'

'Then don't you go on rubbing the ring sudden, miss. It's that as does it. Nothing I can do for you, miss?'

'Not now,' said Fina, and he vanished as she spoke.

When Fina sat down to dinner in the farm kitchen—a very nice dinner it was, boiled pork and beans, and a treacle-tart to follow—she picked up her horn-handled knife and fork and clutched them hard. They felt real enough. But the footman—she must have dreamed him, and the ring. She had left the ring in the dressing-table drawer upstairs, for fear she should rub it accidentally. She knew what a start it would give Miss Patty and the farmer if a genie footman suddenly appeared from nowhere and stood behind their chairs at dinner.

Miss Patty seemed very cheerful.

'It was a piece of luck, father, wasn't it, that pedlar wanting Chinese things? He gave me two pieces of broadcloth that'll cut into three or four coats for you, and a length of black silk that rich it'll stand alone, and ten pounds in gold, and half a dozen silk neck-squares.'