Adah at Terrace Hill

"A lady," was his mental comment, and with as much politeness as if she
had been Madam Richards herself, he opened the carriage door and held
Willie while she entered, asking if she were comfortable, and peering a
little curiously in Willie's face, which puzzled him somewhat. "A near
connection, I guess, and mighty pretty too. Them old maids will raise
hob with the boy,--nice little shaver," thought the kind-hearted Jim.

Once, as Adah caught his good-humored eye, she ventured to say to him: "Has Miss Anna procured a waiting maid yet?"

There was a comical gleam in Jim's eye now, for Adah was not the first
applicant he had taken up to Terrace Hill. He never suspected that this
was Adah's business, and he answered frankly: "No, that's about played out. Madam turned the last one out doors."

"Turned her out doors?" and Adah's face was as white as the snow rifts
they were passing.

The driver felt that he had gossiped too much, and relapsed into
silence, while Adah, in a paroxysm of terror, sat with clasped hands and
closed eyes. Leaning forward, at last she said, huskily: "Driver, driver, do you think she'll turn me off, too?"

"Turn you off!" and in his surprise at the sudden suspicion which for
the first time darted across his mind, Jim brought his horses to a full
stop, while he held a parley with the pale, frightened creature, asking
so eagerly if Mrs. Richards would turn her off. "Why should she? You
ain't going there for that, be you?"