"Hilbrough has sent for me," said Millard to Philip Gouverneur, who was
sitting so as to draw his small form into the easy-chair as he smoked by
the open fire in the newspaper room at the Terrapin Club. Millard, who
had never liked tobacco, was pretending to smoke a cigarette because
smoking seemed to him the right thing to do. He had no taste for any
more desperate vice, and tobacco smoke served to take the gloss off a
character which seemed too highly finished for artistic effect.
"Hilbrough"--Charley smiled as he recalled it--"always gets uneasy when
he's talking to me. He takes his foot off the chair and puts it on the
floor. Then he throws himself forward on the table with his elbows
outward, and then he straightens up. He's a jolly kind of man, though,
and a good banker. But his wife--she is the daughter of a Yankee
school-teacher that taught in Brooklyn till he died--is a vigorous
little woman. She hasn't come to New York to live quietly. She's been
head and front of her set in Brooklyn, and the Lord knows what she won't
undertake now that Hilbrough's getting rich very fast. I haven't seen
her yet, but I rather like her in advance. She didn't try to trap me
into an acquaintance, but sent me word that she wanted advice. There's a
woman who knows what she wants, and goes for it with a clear head. But
what can I do for her? She'll be wanting to give a tea or a ball before
she has acquaintances enough. It's awfully ticklish making such people
understand that they must go slow and take what they can get to begin
with."
"Why," said Gouverneur, "you can tell her to take the religious or moral
reform dodge, and invite all the friends of some cause to meet some
distinguished leader of that cause. Bishop Whipple, if she could capture
him, would bring all the Friends of the Red Man, just as Miss Willard or
Mrs. Livermore would fetch the temperance and woman-suffrage people. You
remember the converted Hindu princess they had over here last winter?
Between her rank, and her piety, and her coming from the antipodes, and
her heathen antecedents, she drew beautifully. Fine woman, too. Even my
mother forgave her for not having a drop of Dutch or Revolutionary blood
in her veins, and we all liked her very much. Give Mrs. Hilbrough that
tip."
Millard shook his head, and smiled. He had the appreciative smile of a
man with a genius for listening, which is a better, because a rarer,
contribution to conversation than good speech. Philip, crouched in his
chair with his face averted from the electric lights, went on:
"Well, then you know there is the literary dodge. Have papers read, not
enough to bore people too deeply, but to bore them just enough to give
those who attend an impression of intellectuality. Have discussions of
literary questions, seasoned with stewed terrapin, and decorated with
dress coats and external anatomy gowns. Those who go to such places
flatter themselves that they are getting into literary circles and
improving their minds, especially if a popular magazinist or the son of
some great author can be persuaded to read one of his rejected articles
or to make a few remarks now and then. Then there is the musical dodge
on the drawing-room scale, or by wholesale, like the Seidl Society, for
example. One is able by this means to promote a beautiful art and
increase one's social conspicuousness at the same time. Then there is
the distinguished-foreigner dodge, give a reception in honor of--"
"Hang it, Philip; I'll tell Mrs. Hilbrough to send for you," said
Millard, laughing as he got up and threw his cigarette into the grate.
"I don't like to interrupt your lecture, but it's eleven o'clock, and
I'm going home. Good-night."
Philip sat there alone and listened to the rain against the windows, and
smoked until his cigar went out. The mere turning of things over in his
mind, and tacking witty labels to them, afforded so much amusement that
inactivity and revery were his favorite indulgences.
Mrs. Hilbrough gave a good deal of thought to her dinner on the next
evening after the conversation between Philip Gouverneur and Millard. To
have it elegant, and yet not to appear vulgar by making too much fuss
over a dinner _en famille_, taxed her thought and taste. Half an hour
before dinner she met her husband with a perturbed face.
"It's too bad that Phillida Callender should have come this evening.
That's just the way with an indefinite invitation. Poor girl, I've been
asking her to come any evening, and now she has hit on the only one in
the year on which I would rather she should have stayed at home."
"I'm sure Phillida is nice enough for anybody," said Hilbrough,
sturdily. "I don't see how she interferes with your plan."
"Well, Mr. Millard'll think I've asked her specially to help entertain
him, and Phillida is so peculiar. She's nobody in particular, socially,
and it will seem an unskillful thing to have asked her--and then she has
ideas. Young girls with notions of their own are--well--you know."
"Yes, I know, home-made ideas are a little out of fashion," laughed
Hilbrough. "But I'll bet he likes her. Millard isn't a fool if he does
part his hair in the middle and carry his cane balanced in his fingers
like a pair of steelyards."
"If he takes me to dinner, you must follow with Phillida. Give your left
arm--"
"I'll feel like a fool escorting Phillida--"
"But you must if Mr. Millard escorts me."
Hilbrough could have cursed Millard. He hated what he called "flummery."
Why couldn't people walk to the table without hooking themselves
together, and why couldn't they eat their food without nonsense? But he
showed his vexation in a characteristic way by laughing inwardly at his
wife and Millard, and most of all at himself for an old fool.
Phillida Callender was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister who had
gone as missionary to one of the Oriental countries. After years of life
in the East, Mr. Callender had returned to America on account of his
wife's health, and had settled in Brooklyn. If illusions of his youth
had been dispelled in the attempt to convert Orientals to a belief in
the Shorter Catechism he never confessed it, even to himself, and he
cherished the notion that he would some day return to his missionary
vocation. The family had an income from the rent of a house in New York
that had been inherited by Mrs. Callender, and the husband received
considerable sums for supplying the pulpits of vacant churches. He had
occupied the pulpit of the church that the Hilbroughs attended during
the whole time of Dr. North's journey to the Holy Land, and had thus
come into a half-pastoral relation to the Hilbrough family. Mr.
Callender sickened and died; the fragile wife and two daughters were
left to plan their lives without him. The sudden shock and the new draft
upon Mrs. Callender's energies had completed her restoration to a
tolerable degree of health and activity. Between the elder daughter,
whom the father had fancifully named Phillida, from the leafy grove in
which stood the house where she was born, and Mrs. Hilbrough there had
grown up a friendship in spite of the difference in age and
temperament--a friendship that had survived the shock of prosperity.
Lately the Callenders had found it prudent to remove to their house
situate in the region near Second Avenue below Fourteenth Street, a
quarter which, having once been fashionable, abides now in the merest
twilight of its former grandeur. The letting of the upper rooms of the
house was a main source of income.
Born in Siam, bred in a family pervaded with religious and propagandist
ideas, and having led a half-recluse life, Phillida Callender did not
seem to Mrs. Hilbrough just the sort of person to entertain a man of the
world.
When dinner was announced Millard did give Mrs. Hilbrough his arm, and
Phillida was startled and amused, when Mr. Hilbrough, after pausing an
instant to remember which of his stout arms he was to offer, presented
his left elbow. Despite much internal levity and external clumsiness,
Hilbrough played his _role_ to the satisfaction of his anxious wife, and
Phillida looked at him inquiringly after she was seated as though to
discover what transformation had taken place in him.
Millard could not but feel curious about the fine-looking, dark young
woman opposite him. But with his unfailing sense of propriety he gave
the major part of his attention to the elder lady, and, without uttering
one word of flattery, he contrived, by listening well, and by an almost
undivided attention to her when he spoke, to make Mrs. Hilbrough very
content with herself, her dinner, and her guest. This is the sort of
politeness not acquired in dancing-school nor learned in books of
decorum; it is art, and of all the fine arts perhaps the one that gives
the most substantial pleasure to human beings in general. Even Hilbrough
was pleased with Millard's appreciation of Mrs. Hilbrough; to think well
of Jenny was an evidence of sound judgment, like the making of a
prudent investment.
Meantime Millard somewhat furtively observed Miss Callender. From the
small contributions she made to the table-talk, she seemed, to him,
rather out of the common run. Those little touches of inflection and
gesture, which one woman in society picks up from another, and which are
the most evanescent bubbles of fashion, were wanting in her, and this
convinced him that she was not accustomed to see much of the world. On
the other hand, there was no lack of refinement either in speech or
manner. That disagreeable quality in the voice which in an American
woman is often the most easily perceptible note of underbreeding was not
there. Her speech was correct without effort, as of one accustomed to
hear good English from infancy; her voice in conversation was an alto,
with something sympathetic in its vibration, as though a powerful
emotional nature lay dormant under the calm exterior. Millard was not
the person to formulate this, but with very little direct conversation
he perceived that she was outside the category to which he was
accustomed, and that her personality might prove interesting, if one had
an opportunity of knowing it. He reasoned that with such a voice she
ought to be fond of music.
"Have you heard much of Wagner, Miss Callender?" he said when there was
a pause in the conversation. He felt before he had finished the question
that it was a false beginning, and he was helped to this perception by a
movement of uneasiness on the part of Mrs. Hilbrough, who was afraid
that Phillida's disqualifications might be too plainly revealed. But if
Mrs. Hilbrough was rendered uneasy by the question, Phillida was not.
She turned her dark eyes upon Millard, and smiled with genuine amusement
as she answered:
"I have heard but one opera in my life, Mr. Millard, and that was not
Wagner's."
"Miss Callender," said Mrs. Hilbrough, quickly, "is one who has
sacrificed social opportunities to her care for an invalid mother--a
great sacrifice to one at her time of life."
"I don't think I have sacrificed much," answered Phillida with a trace
of embarrassment. "My social opportunities could not have been many at
best, and I would rather have led,"--she hesitated a moment,--"I don't
know but I would rather have led my quiet life than--the other."
In her effort to say this so as neither to boast of her own pursuits nor
to condemn those of others, Miss Callender's color was a little
heightened. Millard was sorry that his innocent question had led the
conversation into channels so personal. Mrs. Hilbrough was inwardly
vexed that Phillida should be so frank, and express views so opposed to
those of good society.
"You find Brooklyn a pleasant place to live, no doubt," said Millard,
taking it for granted that Phillida was from Brooklyn, because of her
friendship for the Hilbroughs.
"I liked it when we lived there. I like New York very well. My relatives
all live on this side of East River, and so I am rather more at home
here."
"Then you don't find New York lonesome," said Millard, with a falling
cadence, seeking to drop the conversation.
"Oh, no! I live near Stuyvesant Square, and I have an aunt in Washington
Square of whom I am very fond."
"I am often at the Gouverneurs, on the north side of the Square. I like
Washington Square very much," said Millard, getting on solid ground
again.
"We visit at the same house. Mrs. Gouverneur is my aunt," said Phillida.
Millard was a little stunned at this announcement. But his habitual tact
kept him from disclosing his surprise at finding Miss Callender's
affiliations better than he could have imagined. He only said with
unaffected pleasure in his voice:
"The Gouverneurs are the best of people and my best friends."
Mr. Hilbrough looked in amusement at his wife, who was manifestly
pleased to find that in Phillida she was entertaining an angel unawares.
Millard's passion for personal details came to his relief.
"Mrs. Gouverneur," he said, "had a brother and two sisters. You must be
the daughter of one of her sisters. One lives, or used to live, in San
Francisco, and the other married a missionary."
"I am the missionary's daughter," said Phillida.
Millard felt impelled to redeem his default by saying something to Miss
Callender about the antiquity and excellence of her mother's family. If
he had been less skillful than he was he might have given way to this
impulse; but with the knack of a conversational artist he contrived in
talking chiefly to Mrs. Hilbrough to lead the conversation to Miss
Callender's distinguished great-grandfather of the Revolutionary period,
who was supposed to shed an ever-brightening luster all the way down the
line of his family, and Millard added some traditional anecdotes of
other ancestors of her family on the mother's side who had played a
conspicuous part in the commercial or civic history of New York. All of
which was flattering to Miss Callender, the more that it seemed to be
uttered in the way of general conversation and with no particular
reference to her.
Hilbrough listened with much interest to this very creditable account of
Phillida's illustrious descent, and longed for the time when he should
have the fun of reminding his wife that he had held the opinion from the
beginning that Phillida Callender was good enough for anybody.
Mrs. Hilbrough took Phillida and left the table, Mr. Hilbrough rising as
the ladies passed out, as he had been instructed. When he and Millard
had resumed their seats the cigars were brought, but when Millard saw
that his host did not smoke he did not see why he should punish himself
with a cigar and a _tete-a-tete_ with Hilbrough, whom he could see any
day at the bank. So by agreement the sitting was soon cut short, and the
gentlemen followed the ladies to the drawing-room. Mrs. Hilbrough had
planned a conversation with Millard about her reception while Phillida
should be left to talk with Mr. Hilbrough. But Phillida's position had
been changed during dinner. Mrs. Hilbrough found a new card in her hand.
She drew Miss Callender into the talk about the reception, leaving her
husband to excuse himself, and to climb the stairs to the third floor,
as was his wont, to see that the children had gone to bed well and were
not quarreling, and to have a few cheery words with Jack and the smaller
ones before they went to sleep. Receptions were nothing to him: the beds
on the third floor contained the greater part of the world.
Millard was relieved to find that Mrs. Hilbrough proposed nothing more
ambitious than an evening reception. He commended her for beginning in
new surroundings in this way.
"You see, Mrs. Hilbrough," he said, "a reception seems to me more
flexible than a ball. It is, in a sense, more democratic. There are many
good people--people of some position--who do not care to attend a ball,
who would be out of place at a ball, indeed, which should be a very
fashionable assembly. The party with dancing can come after."
This commendation had an effect opposite to that intended. Mrs.
Hilbrough hadn't thought of a ball, and she now suspected that she was
going wrong. In proposing a reception she was imitating Mrs. Masters,
and she had fancied herself doing the most proper thing of all. To have
a reception called democratic, and treated as something comparatively
easy of achievement, disturbed her.
"If you think a reception is not the thing, Mr. Millard, I will follow
your advice. You see I only know Brooklyn, and if a reception is going
to compromise our position in the future I wish you would tell me. I am
afraid I can hardly accomplish even that."
But Millard again said that a reception was a very proper thing to begin
with. By degrees he drew out a statement of Mrs. Hilbrough's resources
for a reception, and he could not conceal from her the fact that they
seemed too small, for numerousness is rather indispensable to this
species of entertainment. A reception is in its essence entertainment by
wholesale.
"If you could give a reception in honor of somebody," he suggested,
remembering Philip Gouverneur's suggestion, "it might serve to attract
many beyond your own circle, and--and--give you a reason for asking
people whom--you know but slightly, if at all."
But Mrs. Hilbrough did not know any proper person to honor with a
reception. Her embarrassment was considerable at finding herself so
poorly provided with ways and means, and she was slowly coming to the
conclusion that she must wait another winter, or take other means of
widening her acquaintance. A plan had occurred to Millard by which he
could help her out of the difficulty. But as it involved considerable
trouble and risk on his part, he rejected it. There was no reason why he
should go too far in helping the Hilbroughs. It was not a case for
self-sacrifice.
Hilbrough, in the nursery, had found the youngest little girl suffering
with a slight cold,--nothing more than a case of infantile
sniffles,--but Hilbrough's affection had magnified it into incipient
croup or pneumonia, and, after a fruitless search for the vial of tolu
and squills, he dispatched the maid to call Mrs. Hilbrough.
When they were left alone, Millard turned to Phillida, who had shown
nearly as much disappointment over the possible postponement of Mrs.
Hilbrough's project as the projector herself.
"You are deeply interested in this affair, too, Miss Callender," he
said.
"I don't care much for such things myself, but I should dislike to see
Mrs. Hilbrough disappointed," answered Phillida. "She has been such a
good friend to me, and in time of the greatest trouble she was such a
friend to my family, and especially"--she hesitated--"to my father, who
died two years ago, that I am interested in whatever concerns her
happiness or even her pleasure."
Somehow this changed the color of the enterprise in the eyes of Charles
Millard. The personality of Miss Callender was interesting to him, and
besides she was Mrs. Gouverneur's niece. It seemed worth while
gratifying Mrs. Hilbrough at considerable cost if it would give pleasure
to this peculiar young lady.
"Well, with such a certificate of Mrs. Hilbrough's qualities," said
Millard, after a pause, "we must strain a point and get up this
reception for her. We must be good to the good. We can carry this
through together, you and I, Miss Callender," he said.
"What can I do?" asked Phillida, opening her large, dark eyes with
innocent surprise. "I know nobody."
"You can get Mrs. Gouverneur's countenance, perhaps. That will be a
great deal for Mrs. Hilbrough hereafter."
"Perhaps I can get it, with your help, Mr. Millard. My aunt is good
hearted, but she has queer notions. She has a great opinion of the
social importance of her family." And Mrs. Gouverneur's niece laughed in
a way which went to show that she treated with some levity her aunt's
estimate of the value of ancestry.
"One couldn't avoid being proud of such forefathers," answered Millard.
"Perhaps she will help if I ask her. She is very obliging to me--I
belong to the royal family too, you know," she said archly.
"Together we can get her to lend her influence to Mrs. Hilbrough," said
Millard, "or at least to attend the reception. And I think I know how
the whole thing can be managed."
"I am so glad, and so much obliged to you, Mr. Millard," said Phillida,
a gleam of enthusiastic feeling, almost childlike, suddenly showing
itself through the grave exterior. This little revelation of the self
shut within the disciplined self without puzzled Millard and piqued the
curiosity he felt to understand what manner of young girl this was,
habitually so self-mastered, and apparently so full of unknown power or
of unawakened sensibilities. An apprehension of potencies undeveloped in
Miss Callender gave her new acquaintance the feeling of an explorer who
stands on the margin of a land virgin and unknown, eager to discover
what is beyond his sight. For Millard's main interest in life lay in the
study of the personalities about him, and here was one the like of which
he had never seen. The social naturalist had lighted on a new genus.
Mrs. Hilbrough returned with her husband, and Millard explained to her
that a certain Baron von Pohlsen, a famous archaeologist, was at that
time in Mexico studying the remains of Aztec civilization with the view
of enriching the pages of his great work on the "Culturgeschichte" of
the ancient Americans. He was to return by way of New York, where his
money had been remitted to the Bank of Manhadoes, and he had been
socially consigned to Mr. Millard by a friend in Dresden. Pohlsen was
obliged to observe some economy in traveling, and had asked Millard to
find him a good boarding-house. If Mrs. Hilbrough cared to receive the
Baron as a guest for a fortnight, Millard would advise him to accept the
invitation, and, as far as possible, would relieve Mr. Hilbrough of his
share of the burden by taking the Baron about. This would furnish Mrs.
Hilbrough with a good excuse for giving a reception to the nobleman, and
then, without any appearance of pushing, she could invite people far
afield.
It was not in the nature of things that a woman in Mrs. Hilbrough's
position should refuse to entertain a baron. She saw many incidental
advantages in the plan, not the least of which was that Mr. Millard
would be a familiar in the house during the Baron's stay. Hilbrough
acquiesced with a rueful sense that he should be clumsy enough at
entertaining a foreigner and a man of title. Mrs. Hilbrough thanked
Millard heartily for his obliging kindness, but what he cared most for
was that Miss Callender's serious face shone with pleasure and
gratitude.
Having accepted another invitation for the evening, Millard took his
leave soon after ten o'clock, proposing to come at a later time to help
Mrs. Hilbrough--"and Miss Callender, I hope," he added with a bow to
Phillida--to make up the list. Having but two blocks to go, he declined,
in favor of Miss Callender, the Hilbrough carriage, which stood ready at
the door.
The close carriage, with only Phillida for occupant, rattled down Fifth
Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway to Union Square, then over
eastward by Fourteenth street, until after a turn or two it waked the
echoes rudely in a quiet cross street, stopping at length before a
three-story house somewhat antique and a little broader than its
neighbors. Phillida closed and bolted the outer doors, and then opened
one of the inner ones with a night-key, and made her way to what had
been the back parlor of the house. In that densification of population
which proceeds so incessantly on Manhattan Island this old house, like
many another, was modernly compelled to hold more people than it had
been meant for in the halcyon days when Second Avenue was a fashionable
thoroughfare. The second floor of the house had been let, without board,
to a gentleman and his wife, and the rooms above to single gentlemen.
The parlor floor and the basement were made to accommodate the mother
and her two daughters with their single servant. The simple, old back
parlor, with no division but a screen, had two beds for mother and
daughters, while the well-lighted extension made them a sitting room in
pleasant weather. Mrs. Callender clung to one luxury persistently--there
was always a grate fire in the back parlor on cold evenings.
To this back parlor came Phillida with a disagreeable sense that Mrs.
Hilbrough's retreating carriage was rousing the quiet neighborhood as
the sleepy and impatient coachman banged his way over the pavement, the
hummocky irregularities of which saved this thoroughfare from all
traffic that could avoid it; for only the drivers of reckless butcher
carts, and one or two shouting milkmen, habitually braved its perils.
Phillida, as she approached the old-fashioned mahogany door of the back
parlor, in the dim light shed by the half-turned-down gas jet at the
other end of the hall, raised her hand to the knob; but it eluded her,
for the door was opened from within by some one who stood behind it.
Then the head of a girl of seventeen with long, loose blond tresses
peered around the edge of the door as Phillida entered.
"Come in, Philly, and tell us all about it," was the greeting she got
from her sister, clad in a red wrapper covering her night-dress, and
shod with worsted bedroom slippers. "Mama wanted me to go to bed; but I
knew you'd have something interesting to tell about the Hilbroughs, and
so I stuck it out and kept mama company while she did the mending. Come
now, Philly, tell me everything all at once."
The mother sat by the drop-light mending a stocking, and she looked up
at Phillida with a gentle, brightening expression of pleasure--that
silent welcome of affection for which the daughters always looked on
entering.
"What, mama, not in bed yet?" exclaimed Phillida, as she laid off her
outer garments, and proceeded to bend over and kiss her mother, trying
to take away her work at the same time. "Come now, you ought to be in
bed; and, besides, this old stocking of mine is darned all over already,
and ought to be thrown away."
"Ah, Phillida," said her mother with a sweet, entreating voice, holding
fast to the stocking all the time, "if it gives me pleasure let me do
it. If I like to save old things I'm sure it's no harm."
"But you ought to have been in bed at nine o'clock," said Phillida, her
hold on the stocking weakening perceptibly under the spell of her
mother's irresistible entreaty.
"It will take but a minute more if you will let me alone," was all the
mother said as Phillida released the work, and the elaborate darning
went on.
"There's a good deal more darn than stocking to that now," said the
younger sister. "It's a work of genius. I'll tell you, Phillida: we'll
take it to the picture framer's to-morrow and have it put under glass,
and then we'll get a prize for it as a specimen of fancy work at the
American Institute Fair. But now tell me, what did you have for dinner?
How many courses were there? Was there anybody else there? What sort of
china have they got? Do they keep a butler? How does Mr. Hilbrough take
to the new fixings? And, oh, say! are they going to give any parties?
And--"
"Give me a chance, Frisky, and I'll answer you," said Phillida, who
began at the beginning and told all that she could think of, even to
describing the doilies and finger-bowls.
"You said there was a gentleman there. Who was he?" said Agatha, the
younger.
"That Mr. Millard that Cousin Phil is so fond of. He is at Aunt
Harriet's often on Sunday evenings. He's a good looking young man,
dressed with the greatest neatness, and is very polite to everybody in
an easy way."
"Did he talk with you?"
"Not at first. He paid as much attention to Mrs. Hilbrough as he could
have paid to a queen; treating her with a great deal of deference. You
could see that she was pleased. Just think, he asked me if I liked
Wagner's music."
"How did you get out of it?"
"I didn't get out of it at all. I just told him I had never heard
anything of Wagner's. But when he found that I was Mrs. Gouverneur's
niece it made things all right with him, and he made as handsome a
speech about my great-grandfather and all the rest as Aunt Harriet could
have done herself."
"Wasn't Mrs. Hilbrough surprised to hear that you were somebody?"
"I don't know."
"Well, don't you think she was?"
"May be so."
"Didn't she seem pleased?"
"I think she was relieved, for my confession that I hadn't heard many
operas bothered her."
"You said Mr. Millard was polite. How was he polite?"
"He made you feel that he liked you, and admired you; I can't tell you
how. He didn't say a single flattering word to me, but when he promised
to meet Mrs. Hilbrough again, to arrange about the people she is to have
at the reception, he bowed to me and said, 'And Miss Callender, I
hope.'"
"I'll tell you what, Phillida, I'll bet he took a fancy to you."
"Nonsense, Agatha Callender; don't talk such stuff. He's been for years
in society, and knows all the fine people in New York."
"Nonsense, yourself, Phillida; you're better than any of the fine ladies
in New York. Mr. Millard isn't good enough for you. But I just know he
was taken with you."
"Do you think I'm going to have my head turned by bows and fine speeches
that have been made to five hundred other women?"
"There never was any other woman in New York as fine as you, Phillida."
"Not among your acquaintance, and in your opinion, my dear, seeing you
hardly know any other young woman but me."
"I know more than you think I do. If you had any common sense,
Phillida, you'd make the most of Aunt Harriet, and marry some man that
would furnish you with a horse and a carriage of your own. But you
won't. You're just a goosey. You spend your time on the urchins down in
Mackerelville. The consequence is you'll never get married, and I shall
have you on my hands an old maid who never improved her opportunities."
"What stuff!" laughed Phillida.
"You've got a fine figure--a splendid figure," proceeded the younger,
"and a face that is sweet and charming, if I do say it. It's a dreadful
waste of woman. You wrap your talent in a Sunday-school lesson-paper and
bury it down in Mackerelville."
At this point Mrs. Callender put away her elaborate hand-finished
stocking, saying softly:
"Agatha, why do you tease Phillida so?"
"Because she's such a goose," said the younger sister, stubbornly.
Twenty minutes later Agatha, looking from her bedside in the dark corner
of the room, saw her sister kneeling by a chair near the fireside. The
sight of Phillida at prayer always awed her. Agatha herself was
accustomed to say, before jumping into bed, a conventional little
prayer, very inclusive as to subjects embraced, and very thin in
texture, but Phillida's prayers were different. Agatha regarded the form
of her sister, well developed and yet delicately graceful, now more
graceful than ever as she knelt in her long night-dress, her two hands
folded naturally the one across the other, and her head bowed. As she
arranged the bed, Agatha followed mentally what she imagined to be the
tenor of the prayer--she fancied that Phillida was praying to be saved
from vanity and worldliness; she knew that each of the little urchins in
the mission Sunday-school class was prayed for by name. She turned away
a moment, and then caught sight of Phillida as she unclasped her hands
and rested them on the chair. Agatha knew that when Phillida changed her
position at the close of her prayer it was to recite, as she always did,
the "Now I lay me," which was associated in her mind, as in Agatha's,
with an oriental environment, a swarthy nurse in waist-cloth and
shoulder scarf, and, more than all, was linked with her earliest
memories of the revered father at whose knees the children were
accustomed to repeat it. When Phillida rose to her feet in that state of
exaltation which prayer brings to one who has a natural genius for
devotion, the now penitent and awe-stricken Agatha went to her sister,
put her arms about her neck, and leaned her head upon her shoulder,
saying softly:
"You dear, good Phillida!"