CHAPTER VII.

THE VISIT.


The plain though comfortable breakfast of dry toast, baked
potatoes and black tea was over. This morning it had been eaten
from the kitchen table; for, as Mr. Hastings had surmised, it was
_washing day_, and on such occasions, wishing to save work,
Mrs. Deane would not suffer the dining-room to be occupied. To
this arrangement the proud Eugenia submitted the more readily, as
she knew that at this hour they were not liable to calls; so she
who had talked of her _waiting-maid_ and wealthy uncle to
Mrs. Hastings, sat down to breakfast _with_ her waiting-maid
eating her potatoes with a knife and cooling her tea in her
saucer; two points which in the parlor she loudly denounced as
positive marks of ill breeding, but which in the kitchen, where
there was no one to see her, she found vastly convenient! Piles of
soiled clothes were scattered over the floor, and from a tub
standing near, a volume of steam was rising, almost hiding from
view the form of Dora Deane, whose round red arms were diving into
the suds, while she to herself was softly repeating the lesson in
History, that day to be recited by her class, and which she had
learned the Saturday night previous, well knowing that Monday's
duties would keep her from school the entire day.

In the chamber above--her long, straight hair plaited up in
braids, so as to give it the wavy appearance she had so much