It was four o'clock when, with her aunt, she arrived at Colonel
Hetherton's and found the family assembled upon the broad piazza, the
doctor dutifully holding the skein of worsted from which Miss Fanny
was crocheting, and Lucy playing with a kitten, whose movements were
scarcely more graceful than her own, as she sprang up and ran to
welcome Anna.
"Oh, yes, I am delighted to go with you. Pray let us start at once,"
she exclaimed, when, after a few moments of conversation, Anna told
where she was going.
Lucy was very gayly dressed, enough so for a party, Anna thought,
smiling to herself as she imagined the startling effect the white
muslin and bright plaid ribbons would have upon the inmates of the
shanty where they were going. There was a remonstrance from Mrs.
Hetherton against her niece's walking so far, and Mrs. Meredith
suggested that they should ride, but to this Lucy objected. She meant
to take Anna's place among the poor when she was gone, she said, and
how was she ever to do it if she could not walk such a little way as
that? Anna, too, was averse to riding and she felt a kind of grim
satisfaction when, after a time, the little figure, which at first had
skipped along ahead with all the airiness of a bird, began to lag, and
even pant for breath, as the way grew steeper and the path more stony
and rough.
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