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"You're a ninny!" cried the cook, turning on her in disdain; "go back to your pots and kettles, Ann. Whatever would she have to do with the Mistress's beads? It's some old string you see around her neck." "It tell you it's Miss Parrott's red beads!" declared Ann stoutly. She might be sent back to her work among the pots and kettles, but she would stick fast to her tale.
Miss Parrott gathered up the train of her black silk gown and put it over her arm; then in full view of the latticed window of the kitchen and scullery department, she sallied forth across the greensward to the stables beyond, Rachel's brown hand tucked in her own. "Laws a me!" It was the scullery maid who screamed this out. "She's got on Miss Parrott's coral beads."
Her delight was quite equal to Rachel's, and the thin, wrinkled face assumed a more peaceful expression than it had carried for many a day, so that when Hooper came to summon her to luncheon, he was fairly taken aback at its unwonted cheer. "Rachel!" Miss Parrott's voice had a pleasant ring to it.
"For ever and always?" cried Rachel, patting the necklace lovingly with one hand. "Can I keep 'em just forever? Say, can I?" "Yes, child" Miss Parrott's old face smiled in delight at the compact "they are yours to keep all your life. And now," she added brightly, "I want you to come into the drawing-room, and "
Rachel came dancing along a little curving path, the red coral beads flying up and down on her breast, her cheeks nearly as red. "Oh, it's perfectly beautiful here," she cried. "Do you like it?" Miss Parrott's thin cheek glowed, too.
Parrott's brother was a sea-captain who had sent him "stuffed" natural-history curios from all parts of the world, and Mr. Parrott had arranged a rather picturesque interior.
And Miss Parrott's man learned more about princesses and princes and golden chariots and Fairyland and enchanted things and places in general than he ever heard in his life before, and when at last they glided into Badgertown Centre, it really seemed as if the cup of happiness would overflow.
"I used to wear them when I was a little girl, very much smaller than you," said Miss Parrott, her head on one side and falling back to see the effect. "What are they?" asked Rachel, not daring to lay a finger on them, and holding her breath at the idea of being within the magnificent circle of Miss Parrott's early adornments.
"And, dear me!" continued Mother Pepper, in her briskest fashion, all the while she was washing and patting and pulling the two boys into just the right condition for such a grand occasion as this, "there is Miss Parrott's man waiting out there all this time! Now see how good you can stand still, Joey, and then we'll be as quick as we can be."
As for Phronsie, she sat wedged in between the other two, her little mittens folded in her lap, in grave satisfaction. Miss Parrott's man drew a long breath when all this was accomplished, and the only word he said for the first two miles was, "I guess you're all right now." Where they went, no one of the four little Peppers could have told.
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