The time passed as gaily as Miss Ri meant it should: in receiving and returning calls, in a little sight-seeing, in shopping, lunching, dining, a moderate amount of theatre-going. There was a visit to the old low-roofed, grey-shingled market one Saturday evening, when the Goldsborough girls, with their governess, begged Miss Ri and Linda to join them in a frolic.
"We want to buy taffy," they said, "and see the funny people. Do go with us; it will be so jolly." The expedition was quite to Miss Ri's taste and, that Linda might have the experience, she urged the going. A merry time they all had of it, pushing their way from one end of the long market-house to the other, and then parading up and down outside, where the country people, with their wagons, exhibited their wares on tables improvised from a couple of barrels with boards laid across. A little of anything that might be salable was offered, from bunches of dried herbs to fat turkeys.
"It hasn't changed a particle since I was a little girl," declared Miss Ri. "My uncle used to take me to market with him before breakfast on summer mornings, and would buy me a glass of ice cream from that very stand," she designated one with a bee-hive on its sign. "I wonder how I could eat such a thing so early in the morning, though then I thought it a great treat. On Saturday evenings in winter he always brought home a parcel of taffy, which tasted exactly as this does which we have bought to-night. And my aunt, I can see her now with a colored boy walking behind her carrying a huge basket, while she had a tiny one in which to bring home special dainties."
"That custom isn't altogether done away with yet," Miss Carroll told her. "Some of the good old housekeepers still cling to their little baskets."
"And a good thing, too," asserted Miss Ri.
One afternoon, Grace brought her Major to call, and they found him to be a stout, elderly man, rather florid, a little consequential, but quite genial and polite, and evidently very proud of his young fiancée.
"He's not so bad," commented Miss Ri, "although he is not of our stripe. I was sure he could not be a West Point man, and he isn't. He served in the Spanish War for a short time, he told me. However, I don't doubt that it is going to be a perfectly satisfactory marriage. He likes flattery, and Grace is an adept in bestowing it."
Mrs. Matthews and her daughter, Margaret Edmondson, were among the very first to call and to offer an invitation to luncheon. "We shall not make a stranger of you any more than of Maria," said Mrs. Matthews, taking Linda's hands in hers. "I remember you so well as a little bit of a girl, of whom Berkley was always ready to make a playmate when you came to town. My first recollection of you is when I brought Berkie over at Miss Ri's request. You were no more than three and he was perhaps six or seven. You looked at him for a long time with those big blue eyes of yours, and then you said, 'Boy, take me to see the chickens.' You liked to peep through the fence at Miss Parthy's fowls, but were not allowed to go that far alone, you were such a little thing. From that day Berkie was always asking when Miss Ri's little girl was coming back, for you left that same evening."
Miss Ri looked at Linda. Her face was flushed and her eyes downcast.
"I shouldn't be surprised," put in Margaret, "if Berk were wishing now that Miss Ri's little girl would come back."