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46 Rhoda gave a comical groan. "Don’t say it’s I," she pleaded. "I dread it. Please I am not good enough, I don’t know how; and besides, she gives me the creeps!"

Mistress Mary turned on Rhoda with a reproachful smile, saying, "You naughty Rhoda, with the brightest eyes, the swiftest feet, the nimblest fingers, the lightest heart among us all, why do you want to shirk?"

Mistress Mary had noted the fact that Lisa had refused to sit in an unpainted chair, but had dragged a red one from another room and ensconced herself in it, though it was uncomfortably small.

Now Rhoda was well named, for she was a rose of a girl, with damask cheeks that glowed like two Jacqueminot beauties. She was much given to aprons of scarlet linen, to collars and belts of red velvet, and she had a general air of being fresh, thoroughly alive, and in a state of dewy and perennial bloom. Mary was right in her surmise, and whenever she herself was out of Lisa’s sight or reach the child turned to Rhoda instinctively and obeyed her implicitly.