II

To Madame Josephine, the modiste who sometimes comes to me with her

magic touch, transforming this and that, I confided something of my

plans for Calliope, asked her if she would do what she could. Her

kindly, emotional nature responded to the situation as to a kind of

challenge.

"_Bien!_" she cried. "We shall see. You say she is slim--_petite_--with

some little grace? _Bien!_"

So when, next day, Calliope arrived at my house with her parcel brought

forth for the first time in sixteen years, she found madame and me both

tip-toe with excitement. And from some bewildering plates madame

explained how she would cut and suit and "correct" mademoiselle.

"The effect shall be long, slim, excellent. Soft folds from one's

waist--so. From one's shoulder--so. A line of velvet here and here and

down. _Bien!_ Mademoiselle will look younger than everyone! _If_

mademoiselle would wave ze hair back a ver' little--so?" the French

woman delicately advanced.

"Ma'moiselle," returned Calliope recklessly, "will do anything you want

her to, short of a pink rose over one ear. My land, I never hed a dress

before that I didn't hev to skimp the pattern and make it up less

according to my taste than according to my cloth."

That day I sent to the city for a box at the opera. I chose "Faust," and

smiled as I planned to sing the Jewel Song for Calliope before we went,

and to laugh at her in her surprising rôle of Butterfly. "_Ah, je ris de

me voir si belle._" A lower proscenium box, a modest suite at a

comfortable hotel, a little supper, a cab--I planned it all for the

pleasure of watching her; and all this would, I knew, be given its

significance by the wearing of the anomalous, rosy gown. And I loved

Calliope for her weakness as we love the whip-poor-will for his little

catching of the breath.

On the day that our tickets came Calliope appeared before me in some

anxiety.

"Calliope," I said, without observing this, "our opera box is, so to

speak, here."

But instead of the light in her face that I had expected:

"What night?" she abruptly demanded.

"For 'Faust,' on Wednesday," I told her.

And instead of her delight of which I had made sure:

"Will the six-ten express get us in the city too late?" she wanted to

know.

And when I had agreed to the six-ten express:

"It's all right then," she said in relief. "They can hev it a little

earlier and take the six-ten themselves instead of the accommodation.

Hannah and Henry's going to get married a' Wednesday," she explained. "I

hev to be here for that."

Then she told me of the simple plan for Hannah Hager's marriage to her

good-looking giant. Naturally, Grandma Hawley could not think of "giving

Hannah a wedding," so these poor little plans had been for some time

wandering about unparented.

"_I_ wanted," Calliope said, "she should be married in the church with

Virginia creeper on the pew arms, civilized. But Hannah said that'd be

putting on airs and she'd be so scairt she couldn't be solemn. Mis'

Postmaster Sykes, she invited her real cordial to be married in her

sitting-room, but Hannah spunked up and wouldn't. 'A sitting-room

weddin',' s' she to me, private, ''d be like bein' baptized in the

pantry. A parlor,' s' she, ''s the only true place for a wedding. And I

haven't no parlor, so we'll go to the minister's and stand up in _his_

parlor. Do you think,' s' she to me, real pitiful, 'Henry can respec' me

with no place to set m' foot in to be married but jus' the public

parsonage?' Poor little thing! Her wedding-dress is nothing but a last

year's mull with a sprig in, either. And her traveling-dress to go to

the city is her reg'lar brown Sunday suit."

"And they are going to the minister's?" I asked.

"Well, no," Calliope answered apologetically. "I asked them to be

married at my house. I never thought about the opera when I done it. I

never thought about anything but that poor child. I guess you'll think

I'm real flighty. But I always think when two's married in the parsonage

and the man pays the minister, it's like the bride is just the groom's

guest at the cer'mony. And it ain't real dignified for her, seems

though."

I knew well what this meant: That Calliope would have "asked in a few"

and "stirred up" this and that delectable, and gone to no end of trouble

and an expense which she could ill afford. Unless, as she was wont to

say: "When it comes to doing for other people there ain't such a word as

'afford.' You just go ahead and do it and keep some rational yourself,

and the _afford_ 'll sort o' bloom out right, same's a rose."

So for Hannah, Calliope had caused things to "bloom right, same's a

rose," as one knew by Hannah's happy face. On Tuesday she was helping at

my house ("Brides always like extry money," Calliope had advanced when

I had questioned the propriety of asking her to iron on the day before

her marriage) and, on going unexpectedly to the kitchen I came on Hannah

with a patent flat-iron in one hand and a piece of beeswax in the other,

and Henry, her good-looking giant, was there also and was frankly

holding her in his arms. I liked him for his manly way when he saw me

and most of all that he did not wholly release her but, with one arm

about her, contrived a kind of bow to me. But it was Hannah who spoke.

"Oh, ma'am," she said shyly, "I _hope_ you'll overlook. We've hed an

awful time findin' any place to keep company, only walkin' 'round the

high-school yard!"

My heart was still warm within me at the little scene as I went upstairs

to see Calliope in her final fitting of the rose-pink gown, the work on

which had gone on apace. And I own that, as I saw her standing before my

long triple mirrors, I was amazed. The rosy gown suited the little body

wonderfully and with her gray hair and delicate brightness of cheeks,

she looked like some figure on a fan, exquisitely and picturesquely

painted. The gown was, as Calliope had said that a gown should be, "all

nice, slim lines and folds laid in in the right places, and little

unexpected trimmings like you wouldn't think of having them if you

wasn't real up in dress." It was a triumph for skillful madame, who had

wrought with her impressionable French heart as well as with her

scissors.

Calliope laughed as she looked over-shoulder in the mirrors.

"My soul," she said, "I feel like a sparrow with a new pink tail! I

declare, the dress looks more like Lyddy Eider herself than it looks

like me. Do you think I look enough like me so's you'd sense it _was_

me?"

"Mademoiselle," said Madame Josephine simply, "has a look of another

world."

"I wish't I could see it on somebody," Calliope said wistfully; and

since I was far too tall and madame not sufficiently "slendaire,"

Calliope cried:

"There's Hannah! She's downstairs helping, ain't she? Couldn't Hannah

come upstairs a minute and put it on? We're most of a size!"

And indeed they were, as I had noted, cast in the same mold of

proportion and prettiness.

So, with madame just leaving for the city, and I obliged to go down to

the village, Calliope and Hannah Hager were left alone with the

rose-pink silk gown, which fitted them both. Ought I not to have known

what would happen?

And yet it came as a shock to me when, an hour later, as I passed

Calliope's gate on my way home, she ran out and stood before me in some

unusual excitement.

"Do they take back your opera boxes?" she demanded.

"No," I assured her, "they do not. Nor," I added suspiciously, "do folk

take back their promises, you know, Calliope!"

"Well," she said miserably, "I expec' I've done wrong by you. The

righter you try to do by some folks seems 's though the wronger it comes

down on others. Oh," she cried, "I wish't I always knew what was right!

But I can't go to the opera and I can't sit in the box. Yes, sir--I

guess you'll think I'm real flighty and I dunno but what I am. But I've

give my pink silk dress to Hannah Hager for her wedding. And I've lied

some. I've said I meant she should hev it all along!"