BLANCHE AURORA
When Linda waked next morning, she had been dreamless for nine hours;
sunk so deep in slumber after weeks of restless, fitful naps that the
return to earth was a slow, scarcely credible process. A soothing,
rhythmic sweep of sound seemed saying, "Sleep _on_, Sleep _on_"; but a
song sparrow perched on the corner of the sloping roof above her window
was loudly declaring that it was ecstasy to waken. The rapturous burst,
often repeated, won her slow attention. The sun shone through the rosy
curtains and a breeze fanned her opening eyes. She turned her face into
her pillow. Her first thought as ever of her father, she seemed to
commune with him.
"I'm here in your room, dear. I dare think about you. The insults are
going to cease, dearest, _dearest_!"
Her rested brain recalled those sentences in one of Mrs. Porter's
letters, prophetic words of what the public verdict would be when
truth began to appear. Then had come King's reassurance. She knew each
phrase of both letters by heart.
Mrs. Porter had put Miss Barry's best photograph of her brother on
the dresser in this room. Turning, Linda again opened her eyes and
they rested upon it. For a moment she gazed, then rose with a sense of
refreshment. How quiet the house was! She took her bath and dressed,
still without hearing a human movement, and at last went downstairs
to the empty living-room. The old-fashioned clock above the fireplace
pointed to nine forty-five.
"I surely am a petted child!" thought Linda. She moved through the
dining-room and was going to the kitchen when the swing door suddenly
opened, nearly striking her, and a girl of thirteen years appeared.
By dint of peeking around the corner of the house, Blanche Aurora had
obtained a glimpse of the tall slender figure in black when aunt and
niece arrived yesterday; and of the two, Linda was the more surprised
at the sudden encounter now.
In any case, Blanche Aurora was not easily daunted. She had spent
years in twitching smaller brothers and sisters into the path of
duty. Perhaps the necessity of her being "careful about many things,"
notwithstanding her youth, had drawn Miss Belinda to her in sympathetic
remembrance of her own childhood; but if that was the case, it had
resulted in no tenderness given or received. Theirs was a relation of
armed neutrality in which neither ever got much the better of the other.
Blanche Aurora's eyes were round, expressionless, and light blue. Each
of the two pigtails of her red hair had a string braided in with it to
discourage relaxation, and this cord was twisted around their ends with
a determined hand, the whole so tightly reined that each braid turned
up at the end like a fishhook.
A dozen times this morning she had pushed open the swing door under the
impression that she heard the guest descend: the wonderful guest, who
never had to touch foot to the ground, but rolled around in carriages
and ate off gold plates. Blanche Aurora had vaguely expected something
so overwhelming in the appearance of the millionaire's daughter that
the apparition of Linda in a plain white gown, not glittering at any
point, was somewhat disappointing. The flat-chested little maid viewed
the tall girl's shining, waving hair and her large, grave eyes for a
moment; then she spoke:--
"Pretty near hit you, didn't I?" she said airily.
"My aunt--" murmured Linda.
"They've gone to see the chickens, and I'm to give you your breakfast.
There's your place."
Blanche Aurora's businesslike, no-time-to-spare finger pointed to the
white table which bore a dish of fruit and a single goldbanded plate
with its complement of silver and napkin.
Linda sat down meekly.
"I s'pose you'll want a finger-bowl," said Blanche Aurora.
"If--if it's convenient," replied Linda.
The other actually smiled. "Ho! We've got lots of 'em," she returned,
and stalked to the sideboard, where she poured water into a bowl and
placed it close by Linda's elbow.
While the guest opened an orange, the light-blue eyes watched her
white ringless hands. "She don't look a bit rich," thought Blanche
Aurora, "but I'll bet she's stuck-up."
She withdrew against the wall, from whence Linda felt her unwinking,
round stare.
"Are you my aunt's little maid?" asked the girl, after the silence
began to be embarrassing.
"No," came the prompt reply, "I'm her help." All Blanche Aurora's
remarks were made in a loud tone as if she were talking against the
sound of the sea. "I come after I git the children to school."
"Children?"
"My brothers and sisters."
Linda glanced up at the short, slight form clad in a faded gingham
dress that was outgrown.
"Don't you go to school yourself?"
"Ho! No! I got through last year; I'm thirteen."
A pause, during which the help reluctantly admired Linda's hands and
her deft manner of manipulating spoon and orange. As the guest laid
down the empty rind, her companion's voice rent the air.
"Oatmeal, wheatena, and all the cold cereals!" she vociferated.
Linda started. "I--I don't really care--"
"One's jest as easy as the other. They're all handy."
"I'll take the--oatmeal, please," replied Linda under the pressure of
that strenuous reassurance.
During the brief absence of the small maid, the girl leaned back in her
chair, and looked through the open windows fronting the sea.
Presently, Blanche Aurora's foot kicked open the swing door and she
advanced with the cereal and noted that the guest shivered.
"Be ye cold?" she questioned sharply; "I can shet the winders."
"Yes, I wish you would. This is like eating on a boat."
"I hate bo'ts," vouchsafed the help, and crossing to the windows
slammed them down, after which she resumed her position against the
wall while Linda served herself with oatmeal.
"There's coffee and rolls and eggs," shouted Blanche Aurora after half
a minute of dead silence during which the clock ticked.
Linda jumped again. The help was so very responsible and so clean and
wiry that she smiled as she lifted her eyes.
"I've got an hourglass and you're to tell me when you want 'em put on."
"What?"
"The eggs; they're good and fresh. Luella Benslow's hens laid 'em."
"Are those the hens Aunt Belinda has gone to see?"
"Yes; Mis' Porter wanted to see the hens that have hot-water bags."
Linda kept on smiling.
"Dear me!" she said. "What is your name, please?"
"Blanche Aurora Martin," came the prompt report; "but you don't have to
say the Martin. It's Blanche Aurora for short."
"I see; and I am Miss Barry."
"Yes, I know," was the prompt reply; "but I made up my mind to call you
Miss Belinda 'cause if there was two Miss Barrys, I couldn't stand it."
"Really? Very well; but what did you mean about hens with hot-water
bags?"
"Why, Luella puts 'em in every nest when it comes cold, and Mis'
Porter, she laughed and laughed when she heard about it; Luella's some
slack about lots o' things, but she's got real good ideas about helpin'
the hens along and Mis' Porter wanted Miss Barry should take her over
and see 'em." Blanche Aurora's sharp gaze noted the guest's languid
appetite as evinced by the slight diminution of the oatmeal. "The eggs
is real good," she continued, "and I've got an hourglass."
Linda lifted her somber eyes and showed the tips of her white teeth
again.
"I hope you don't boil them an hour, Blanche Aurora?"
It wasn't very often that Miss Barry's maid was offered a joke, but the
relaxing of her thin cheeks now showed that she could take one.
"No danger!" she returned smartly. But the suggestion of eggs, even
those laid luxuriously in the proximity of a hot-water bag, could not
tempt the pale guest this morning.
"Coffee and toast sound very good," she said. "No eggs this morning, I
think."
"Hev it your own way," returned the help; "we cal'late to give you
what you want," and at once she attacked the swing door. The little
creature's sudden energy of motion after absolute repose was like her
stentorian tones breaking dead silence.
When coffee and toast were set before the guest, Blanche Aurora again
supported the wall and watched her charge with an unremitting stare.
"You don't need to wait," said Linda.
"I druther," returned Blanche Aurora with a finality which admitted of
no argument.
The guest followed the line of least resistance.
"Is Mrs.---- is the hen lady one of your neighbors?"
"Luella Benslow? Yes, she and her father. Her father's a wonderful
man--Luella's father is."
"What does he do?"
"Well, he don't do nothin' much. He never did support his family nor
anythin' like that; but he has such wonderful 'complishments. There
ain't nobody can ketch a frog like Cy Benslow can."
Linda looked up and felt color coming into her cheeks in the novel
desire to laugh.
"How does he do it?"
"Like this." The round light eyes gained a spark of interest as Blanche
Aurora began describing large circles in the air with her right
hand, and advancing toward the table with a stealthy tread. As she
approached, the circles contracted gradually, until close to the guest
they had narrowed to a small ring out of which the hand made a jab
toward the victim's face, and Linda jerked her head back.
Blanche Aurora smiled in triumph and returned to her place.
"I--I really thought you had my nose!"
"That's jest it. Ye see the frog's got to look so many directions, he
don't know which way to jump, so he's jest kind o' par'lyzed and gits
ketched."
"Very ingenious," laughed Linda.
Yes, she laughed. Blanche Aurora, unconscious that she had performed a
feat eclipsing Cy Benslow's, warmed to her theme.
"And you jest ought to see him git worms for bait."
"Now, Blanche Aurora, it was bad enough to be a frog. I positively
decline to be a worm."
"You don't have to be. I'll jest tell ye about it. He goes up to a
post, Cy does." The speaker moved forward, and Linda put out a warning
hand.
"Nor a post either, Blanche Aurora. I firmly decline to be a post."
"And he takes a board and scrapes it back and forrard across the post;
it grits somethin' awful, and the shakin' gets to the worms somehow
and they begin comin' up out o' the ground to see what's goin' on,
and"--Blanche Aurora nodded significantly--"and that's the last they
_do_ see, I can tell ye. They go whack into Cy's pail and ketch his
dinner for him."
"What a wizard!"
"No, he don't get no lizards, and I'm glad we don't have 'em. There was
a lady once boardin' to Benslows' and she had one with a chain to its
leg and she let it run all over her. Bah!" the speaker shuddered. "I'd
hate to feel their scrabbly feet, wouldn't you?"
"I've finished, Blanche Aurora," said Linda hastily. She pushed her
chair back from the table. There was pressure in her throat and in her
eyes. She rose abruptly.
"Say! you forgot your finger-bowl," shouted her waitress after the
figure swiftly retreating toward the piazza.