INSIDE THE COTTAGE
It was what Nancy called the pluperfect hour of the day; that is, of a
rainy day. The curtains of the living-room were drawn over the
windows, the mellow lamplight dealing kindly with their faded folds.
The rain, which had brought with it an early autumn chill, beat
rhythmically against the panes, and gurgled contentedly from a water
spout, as if it were revelling in the fact that it had had the whole
countryside to itself for four-and-twenty hours.
Alma had washed her yellow hair, and had built a fire to dry it by.
Nancy, in her dressing-gown and slippers, with her own brown mane
braided into a short, thick club, was icing the chocolate cake, helping
herself generously to the scrapings in the earthenware bowl. Mrs.
Prescott was embroidering. This was her greatest accomplishment,
learned in a French convent. Knitting bored her to death, and darning
drove her crazy, but she could sit by the hour stitching infinitesimal
petals on microscopic flowers, and turning out cake mats, tea-cloths
and fancy collars by the score. Faded only slightly by her forty-odd
years, she was still an exquisitely pretty woman, with a Dresden-china
face, marred ever so little by the fine lines which drooped from the
corners of her delicate nose to the corners of her childish mouth. Her
golden hair was barely silvered, her skin as fresh and rosy as Alma's,
and her round little wrists, and pink-tipped fingers, Alma might have
envied. The lacy dressing-gown she wore, which, at the slightest
motion, shook out a faint little whiff of some expensive French
perfume, struck an odd note in the shabby room, where the couch sadly
displayed a broken spring, and not the most careful placing of
furniture that Nancy could devise entirely concealed the holes in the
faded carpet.
"We ought to put a glass cover over Mother, the way some people cover
French clocks," Nancy said laughingly. "You're much too valuable to
get any of the dust of every-day life on you, Mamma."
"I'm getting old, my dear. I only think of my daughters now," said
Mrs. Prescott, with a little sigh and pushing a curly wisp of hair back
from her face. "I shall be putting on spectacles soon."
"Catch you! You'd go blind as a bat before you'd do any such violence
to your beauty. You're like Alma. I had to argue for half an hour
to-day to make Alma wear her raincoat. It wasn't becoming, and she'd
far rather die of pneumonia than look like a----"
"A hippopotamus," said Alma. "That's what I look like in the old
thing. The sleeves dangle over my hands like a fire hose."
"Nancy, I've come to a definite conclusion in regard to you and Alma,
for this winter," said Mrs. Prescott, laying down her embroidery and
trying to look practical and decided.
"How much will it cost?" Nancy's eyes twinkled.
"It's not a question of money."
"Nothing ever is--with Mamma and Alma," Nancy thought, but she was
silent, and continued to lick the chocolate off her spoon composedly.
"I have thought the whole thing over very carefully, and I am quite
sure that the matter of money must not be weighed against the value
which it would have for you girls."
"It's not a trip to Europe, is it, Mamma?" asked Alma, quite as if she
expected that this might be the case. Indeed, a trip to Europe would
have been no more incredible to Nancy than her mother's plan, which
Mrs. Prescott proceeded to unfold.
"You see, my dears, living as we do, you girls are absolutely cut off
from the opportunities which are so essential to every girl's success
in life. This has been a great worry to me. You are growing older,
and you are forming no acquaintances that will be of value to you. For
this reason I have decided that the expense of sending you both--for a
last year, you understand--to a good school, a smart school, a school
where Alma can meet girls who will count for something in social
life--is an expense that must be met."
"But--heavens, we've had all the ordinary schooling we need," exclaimed
Nancy in amazement. "If--if I could just have a few months' tutoring
so that I could take my college exams in the spring--I could work my
way through college easily----"
"I don't want you to go to college, Nancy," said Mrs. Prescott
irritably. "What in the world is the use of a whole lot of ologies and
isms--and ruining your looks over a lot of senseless analyzing and
dissecting and everything----"
"I won't be studying anything useless, Mother dearest. But don't you
see that it will be ever so much easier for me to get a position as a
teacher if I can show a Bachelor's degree instead of just a smattering
of French, or a thimbleful of ancient history?"
"There's no reason why you should think of becoming a teacher,"
answered Mrs. Prescott. "And I wish you wouldn't talk about it--it's
so dreadfully drab and gloomy."
"But I want to make my living in some way."
"If you and Alma marry well, there won't be any reason why you should
make your living."
"But, Mother, we can't count on chance, like that. Suppose Alma and I
never met a rich man whom we could love--we'd be helpless."
"A year at Miss Leland's will give both of you plenty of opportunities.
You'll meet girls there whom you ought to know, girls who will invite
you to their houses, through whom you'll meet eligible young men----"
"The expense of paying for board and tuition at Miss Leland's would be
the least of the digging we'd have to do into the family purse. We'd
be under obligations to people, which we would never be in a position
to repay--we'd be no better than plain, ordinary sponges. I--I
couldn't bear it. Besides, the fees at Miss Leland's are terribly
high. I could go to college for almost two years on what I'd pay for
one year at Miss Leland's--and all that we'd get at that school would
be a little French, a smattering of history, dancing and fudge parties."
"And extremely desirable acquaintances."
"But, Mother, we'd never be able to keep up with them on their own
scale of living," pleaded Nancy, with a hopeless conviction in her
heart that she was talking to the winds. "Girls like Elise
Porterbridge and Jane Whiteright have an allowance of a hundred a
month, and anything else they want, when they've spent it."
"You've got money on the brain, Nancy," said Alma, shaking her curls
off her face. "You are a regular old miser."
"Well, you're right, perhaps. I--I hate to, heaven knows, but we do
have to think about it, Alma. It's the poor gamblers who are always
counting on a lucky chance that are ruined. I want to be prepared for
the worst--and then if something nice turns up, why, wouldn't that be
ten times better than if, when we had been counting on the best, the
worst should happen?"
"You see, dears," Mrs. Prescott had entirely missed the point of
Nancy's last remark, "Uncle Thomas is very old, and I am sure--I am
_quite_ sure that he will relent."
"Oh, Mother!" Poor Nancy flung up both hands in despair.
"I have entered you both at Miss Leland's, so, really, there is no use
in arguing about it any more. And I've already sent the check for the
first term. Everything is decided. I didn't tell you until to-night,
just because I was afraid that this hard-headed old Nancy of mine would
try to argue me out of it; when I _know_ that it's the best and wisest
thing to do. Nancy, darling, please don't scowl like that. You aren't
angry with Mother, are you?" A soft little hand was laid on Nancy's
muscular brown one, and in spite of herself the girl relented, with a
whimsical smile and a sigh.
"I'd like to see anyone who could be angry with you for two minutes,"
she said, burrowing her brown head in the lace on her mother's shoulder.
"That nasty old Uncle Thomas has been angry with me for ten years, very
nearly. Isn't he a dreadful old man?" laughed Mrs. Prescott, tweaking
Nancy's ear.
"We'll have to get a lot of new clothes if we are going to boarding
school." Alma, having spread the towel on the floor, reclined full
length in front of the fire, and meditated with satisfaction on the
delightful prospect.
"Mamma, if I could just once have a hat with a feather on it--a genuine
_plume_, I'd be happy for the rest of my days."
"Wouldn't Alma be lovely?" cried Mrs. Prescott delightedly. "Oh, you
don't know how I long to give my daughters everything--everything. One
thing you must have, Alma, is a black velvet dress--made very simply,
of course. They are so serviceable," she flung this sop to Nancy, who,
with her head thrown back, was good-humoredly tracing phantom figures
in the air with her forefinger.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," she observed, agreeably. "Oh,
darling Uncle Thomas, kindly lend us a million. We need it, oh, we
need it--every hour we need it!"
"Let's set one day aside for shopping," was Alma's bright suggestion;
she felt that this would be her element. "We'll go into the city in
the morning, get everything done by noon, lunch at Mailliard's and then
go to a matinee. I haven't seen a play since Papa took us to see
Humpty Dumpty, when Nance and I were little things."
"I've got eighty-three cents," said Nancy. "I'd like to see the color
of _your_ money, ma'am, before we do any gallivanting."
"Well,--I'm not going to sit here gazing at that cake another
minute,--_please_ give me a slice, Nancy, sugar-pie, lambkin,--just a
wee little scrooch of it," begged Alma, snuffing the handsome chocolate
masterpiece of Nancy's culinary skill. Nancy took off a crumb and gave
it to her, which elicited a wail of indignation from Alma.
"Well, here you are. And it'll give you a nice tummy-ache, too,"
predicted Nancy, cutting off a generous slice. "Good heavens--there's
the door-bell, Mother!" She stopped, knife in hand and listened,
petrified. "Who on earth can be coming here at this time of night, and
all of us in our dressing-gowns. Alma, you're the most nearly dressed
of all of us. Here, pin up your hair. There it goes again. Fly!"
Alma seized a handful of hairpins, and thrusting them into her hair as
she went, ran out of the room.
Nancy and her mother listened with eyebrows raised.
"Must be a letter or something," Nancy surmised. "You don't
suppose--it couldn't be----"
Alma forestalled her conjectures, whatever they might have been, by
entering the room with her face shining and an opened letter in her
hand.
"It's an _invitation_, Nancy," she beamed. "Isn't that exciting?
Elise Porterbridge wants us to come to a 'little dance she's giving
next Friday night.' And the chauffeur is waiting for an answer."
"Funny she was in such a hurry," remarked Nancy. "I suppose someone
fell out, and she's trying to get her list made up. What do you think,
Mother?"
"Why, it's delightful. I want you to know Elise better anyway. You
know her aunt married the Prince Brognelotti, and she will probably do
everything for that girl when she makes her debut." Mrs. Prescott
rustled over to the writing-table and despatched a note in her flowing,
pointed hand.
"Hush, Mamma, the chauffeur will hear you," cautioned Nancy with a
slight frown. It always pricked her when Alma or her mother said
snobbish little things, and roused her democratic pride--the stiffest
pride in the world.
"A dance," carolled Alma, when the door had slammed again behind the
emissary of the Porterbridge heiress. "A real, sure enough dance!"
She seized Nancy by the waist and whirled her about; then suddenly she
stopped so abruptly that Nancy bumped hard against the table. Alma's
face was sober, as the great feminine wail rose to her lips:
"I haven't a thing to wear!"
"You must get something, then," said Mrs. Prescott, positively, as if
it were the simplest thing in the world. "I want you to look lovely,
Alma. It's dreadful to think of a girl with your beauty not being able
to appear at your best all the time." Mrs. Prescott had a habit of
speaking to Alma as if she were a petted debutante of nineteen, instead
of just a pretty, care-free youngster of sixteen. She looked at Nancy,
who was the treasurer of the family, much as an impecunious queen might
look at her first Lord of the Exchequer while asking him for funds to
buy a new crown.
"Why can't you wear your blue crepe," was Nancy's unfeeling answer.
"It's very becoming, and you've hardly worn it."
"If you call that an evening dress," Alma cried, on the verge of tears,
"you've a vivid imagination--that's all I've got to say. I just won't
go if I have to look dowdy and home-made. I wouldn't have any kind of
a time--you know that----"
"You could cut out the neck and sleeves, and get a new girdle. I'm
going to do that to my yellow, and with a few flowers--there'll be some
lovely cosmos in the garden--it'll look very nice. And you're sure to
have a good time, no matter what you wear, Alma."
"Oh, she can't go if her clothes aren't just right, Nancy--that's all
there is to it," said Mrs. Prescott.
"Clothes," declared Alma, her voice quavering between tears and
indignation, "are the most important things in the world. It doesn't
matter _how_ pretty a girl is--if her dress is dowdy, no one will
notice her."
"And you must remember, Nancy, that she will be compared with girls who
will be sure to be wearing the freshest, smartest and daintiest
things," added Mrs. Prescott. Nancy began to laugh. They argued with
her as if she were some stingy old master of the house instead of a
slip of a girl of seventeen. But there was some truth in what Alma had
said, and Nancy knew what agonies would torment her if she felt that
she fell a whit below any girl at the dance in point of dress. Nancy
could sympathize with her there--only it was quite out of the question
that _both_ she and Alma should have new dresses. She thought hard a
moment. There was not very much left in the family budget to carry
them through the remainder of the month--but then she might let the
grocer's and butcher's bills run over, or, better still, she might
charge at one of the city department stores where the Prescotts still
kept an account. It would be too bad if Alma's first dance should be
spoiled, even if the couch did go in its shabby plush for another month
or so. Five yards of silk would come to about fifteen dollars--new
slippers not less than seven, silk stockings, two--that made
twenty-four dollars--thirty to give a margin for odds and ends like
lining and trimming. Alma would need a pretty evening dress when she
went off to school, and she might as well have it now.
"Well, listen, you poor old darling," she said slowly. "To-day's
Saturday. If we trot in town on Monday and get the material, we could
easily make up a pretty dress for you to wear on Friday night. Let's
see----"
"She could have a pale blue taffeta," Mrs. Prescott suggested, who was
in her element when the subject turned to the matter of clothes, "made
perfectly plain--with a broad girdle--or you could have a girdle and
shoulder-knots of silver ribbon--and wear silver slippers with it. It
would be dear with a round neck, and tiny little sleeves, and a short,
bouffant skirt. You could wear my old rose-colored evening wrap,--it's
still in perfect condition."
"That would be _scrumptious_!" shrieked Alma, flinging her arms about
them both. "You two are angelic _dumplings_, that's what you are."
"Monday morning, then," said Nancy. "We'd better take an early train."
When her mother and sister had gone to bed, she took out her little
account book and began to figure, then all at once she flung the pencil
down in disgust at herself.
"Alma's right. I'm turning into a regular old miser. I'm not going to
bother--I'm not going to bother. But--but somebody's _got_ to." She
frowned, staring at the small old-fashioned picture of her father,
which smiled gaily at her from the top of the desk. "You left that
little job to me, didn't you?" she said aloud, and the memory of some
words her father had once spoken to her laughingly came back to her
mind--"You're my eldest son, Nancy--mind you take care of the women."
"Only I'm jolly well sick of being a boy, Daddy," she said, as she
jumped into bed. "I'll let the first person who steps forward take the
job."