“Katinka,” I repeated to Pelleas in a kind of absent-minded pleasure.
“It sounds like throwing down a handful of spoons,” submitted Pelleas,
wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
We saw Katinka first when we were all about the table--Cousin Diantha,
Miss Waitie who was her spinster sister, Pelleas and I, and Andy, who
worked for his board. I shall not soon forget the picture that she made
as she passed the corn cakes,--Katinka, little maid-of-all-work, in a
patched black frock and a red rubber ring and a red rubber bracelet.
Her face was round and polished and rosy with health, and she was
always breathless and clothed with a pretty fear that she was doing
everything wrong. Moreover, she had her ideas about serving--she
afterward told me that she had worked for a week at the minister’s in
Paddington where every one at breakfast, she added in an awed voice,
“had a finger bowl to themself.” Cousin Diantha, good soul, cared
very little how her dainties were served so that the table was kept
groaning, and Katinka had therefore undertaken a series of reforms to
impress which she moved in a mysterious way. For example, as she handed
the corn cakes and just as I raised my hand to take one, steaming,
moist, yellow and quite beneath my touch, the plate was suddenly
sharply withdrawn, a spirited revolution of Katinka’s hands ensued, and
the cakes reappeared upon my other side.
“We got the table set longways o’ the room to-night,” she explained
frankly, “and I can’t hardly tell which _is_ left till I look at my
ring.”
Conversation with Katinka while she served was, I perceived, a habit
of the house; and indeed Katinka’s accounts of kitchen happenings were
only second in charm to Katinka’s comments upon the table talk. It
was to this informality that I was indebted for chancing on a radiant
mystery on that very night of our arrival.
“Mis’ Grocer Helman,” said Cousin Diantha to me at this first
supper--every woman in Paddington has her husband’s occupation for a
surname--“wants to come to see you about making over her silk. She’s
heard you was from the city an’ she says Mis’ Photographer Bronson’s
used up the only way she--Mis’ Grocer--knew on a cheap taffeta. Mis’
Grocer Helman won’t copy. She’s got a sinful pride.”
Katinka set down the bread plate.
“I got some loaf sugar sent up from Helman’s to-day,” she contributed,
“because I just _had_ to get that new delivery wagon up here to this
house somehow. It’d been in front o’ Mis’ Lawyer More’s twict in one
forenoon.”
And at this Miss Waitie, who was always a little hoarse and very
playful, shook her head at Katinka.
“Now, new delivery wagon nothin’,” she said skeptically; “it’s that
curly-headed delivery boy, _I’ll_ be bound.”
So it was in my very first hour in Cousin Diantha’s house that I saw
what those two good souls had never suspected. For at Miss Waitie’s
words Andy, who worked for his board, suddenly flushed one agonizing
red and spilled the preserves on the tablecloth. What more did any sane
woman need on which to base the whole pleasant matter? Andy was in love
with Katinka.
I sat up very straight and refused the fish balls in my preoccupation.
My entire visit to Paddington quickly resolved itself into one
momentous inquiry: Was Katinka in love with Andy?
“Is Katinka in love with Andy?” I put it to Pelleas excitedly, when at
last we were upstairs.
“Katinka? Andy? Andy? Katinka?” responded Pelleas politely.
“Now, one would think you were never in love yourself,” I chided him,
and fell planning what on earth they would live on. Why are so many
little people with nothing at all to live on always in love--when every
one knows spinster after spinster with an income apiece?
I was not long in doubt about Katinka. The very next morning I came
upon her in the hall, her arms filled with kindling for the parlour
fire. I followed her. Her dear, bright little face and yellow braids
reminded me of the kind of doll that they never make any more.
“Katinka,” said I, lingering shamelessly, “do you put the sticks in
across or up and down?”
For it may very well be upon this nice question as well as Angora cats
that Pelleas and I will have our final disagreement, which let no one
suppose that we will really ever have.
She looked up to answer me. The gingham bib of her apron fell down. And
there, pinned to her tight little waist, I beheld--a button-picture
of Andy! Never tell me that there does not abide in the air a race of
little creatures whose sole duty it is to unveil all such secrets to
make glad the gray world. Never tell me that it is such a very gray
world either, if you wish my real opinion.
She looked down and espied the exposed mystery. She cast a frightened
glance at me and I suppose that she saw me, who am a very foolish old
woman, smiling with all my sympathetic might. At all events she gasped
and sat down among the kindling, and said:--
“Oh, ma’am, we’re agoin’ to be marrit to-morrow. An’ Mis’ Bethune--I’m
so scairt to tell ’er.”
I sat down too and caught my breath. This blessed generation. I had
been wondering if these two were in love and on what they could live
when at last they should make up their minds and lo, they were to be
married to-morrow.
“Why, Katinka!” said I; “where?”
The little maid-of-all-work sobbed in her apron.
“I do’ know, ma’am,” she said. “Andy, he’s boardin’ so, an’ I’m a
orphing. I t’ought,” mentioned Katinka, still sobbing, “maybe Mis’
Bethune’d let us stand up by the dinin’-room windy. The hangin’ lamp
there looks some like a weddin’ bell, Andy t’ought.”
The hanging lamp had an orange shade and was done in dragons.
“When I see you an’ him las’ night,” Katinka went on, motioning with
her stubby thumb toward the absent Pelleas, “I t’ought maybe you’d sign
fer seein’ it done. I tol’ Andy so. Mis’ Bethune, I guess she’ll be
rarin’. I wanted it to be in the kitchen, but Andy, he’s so proud. His
pa was in dry goods,” said Katinka, wiping her eyes at the mere thought.
Here was a most delicious business thrown, as it were, fairly in my
arms. I hailed it with delight, and sat holding my elbows and planning
with all my might.
“Katinka,” said I portentously, “you leave _where_ you are to be
married to me.”
“Oh, ma’am!” said Katinka.