CHAPTER IV
AS she reëntered her mother's room, she observed at a glance that something important had happened since she left it an hour ago. Aunt Emma had removed all the pins from her mouth. Her mother's usually lusterless eyes were bright, and there was a little color in her pasty cheeks. Aunt Augusta was clearing up her work, putting away spools, and rolling up bits of silk and tape and binding with expressive jerks and jabs.
Reba asked what had happened and learned in one brief, inflamed announcement that some one was coming to supper!
No one ever came to supper!
"But who?" she gasped.
"It's nobody we invited. You may be sure of that," Aunt Augusta replied. "Patience Patterson never did have any manners—pushing herself into everybody's face and eyes! I told her we had an invalid up here, and couldn't have company to meals, the way we'd like, but to come and make us a call sometime. She said we mustn't make company of her; she'd come straight up and have supper with us, and stay till her train went back to Union at nine-fifty to-night. She's off to Tampico, or Porto Rico—some outlandish place—to-morrow, and this would be the only chance she'd get, she said," Aunt Augusta's voice assumed a scornful, mincing tone, "of seeing all us good people. Hypocrite! I started to explain that excitement was
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