"BRAVO, ATALANTA!"
Phillis received quite an ovation as soon as she crossed the
threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into
the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to
have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her
calm elder-sisterly way, and put her arm round her, and hoped she was
not so very tired, and there was so much to say, and so much to do,
and she wanted her advice, and so on.
And on Nan's forehead lay a thoughtful pucker; and on the centre-table
were sundry breadths of green silk, crisp-looking and faintly bronzed,
like withered leaves with the sun on them.
"Oh, dear! has Miss Drummond been here in my absence?" asked Phillis,
with the overwhelmed feeling of a beginner, who has not yet learned to
separate and classify, or the rich value of odd moments. "Three
dresses to be done at once!"
"One at a time. But never mind Miss Drummond's this moment. Mother is
safe in the store-cupboard for the next half-hour, and we want to know
what you mean by your ridiculous message, 'Trimmings, not Squails.'
Dulce is dying of curiosity, and so am I."
"Yes; but she looks so hot and tired that she must refresh herself
first." And Dulce placed on her sister's lap a plate of yellow plums,
perfectly bedded in moss, which had come from the vicarage garden. And
as Phillis enjoyed the dainty repast and poured out her morning's
experiences in the ears of her astonished auditors, lo, the
humiliation and the sting were forgotten, and only an intense sense of
the humor of the situation remained.
It was Dulce whose pink cheeks were burning now.
"Oh, Phillis! how could you? It is too dreadful even to think about!
That fat old thing, too! Why, she is twice as big as Mrs. Squails!"
"Beggars cannot be choosers, my dear," replied Phillis, airily; for
rest was pleasant, and the fruit was good, and it was so delicious to
feel all that was over and she was safe in her nest again; and then
the pleasure of talking it all over! "Do you know--?" she began, in a
disconnected manner, and then sat and stared at her sisters with
luminous gray eyes, until they begged to know what the new idea was.
"Oh, nothing," she replied, and colored a little. And then she blurted
out, in an oddly-ashamed way, "it was talking to you two dears that
put it in my head. But I could not help thinking that moment that if
one is ever good enough to get to heaven, one of the greatest
pleasures will be to talk about all our past miseries and
difficulties, and how the angels helped us! and, though you may laugh
at me,"--they were doing nothing of the kind, only admiring her with
all their might,--"I have a kind of fancy that even my 'Trimmings, not
Squails' episode may have a different look up there!"
"My dear," returned Nan, gently, for she loved all speeches of this
sort, being a devout little soul and truly pious, "nothing was further
from my thoughts than to laugh at you, for the more we think in this
way the grander our work will appear to us. Mrs. Trimmings may be fat
and vulgar, but when you were measuring her and answering her so
prettily--and I know how nicely you would speak, Phil--I think you
were as brave as one of those old knights--I cannot remember their
names--who set out on some lofty quest or other!"
"I suppose the child means Sir Galahad," observed Phillis, with a
groan at Nan's ignorance. "Oh, Nannie, I wish I could say,--
"'My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure;'"
and then she softly chanted,--for quotation never came amiss to her,
and her head was crammed with choice selections from the poets,--
"'All armed I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the Holy Grail.'"
"Yes, the Sangreal, or the Quest. It does not matter what, for it was
only an allegory," returned Nan, who had plenty of ideas, only she
confused them sometimes, and was not as clever in her definitions as
Phillis. "It only meant that those grand old knights had some holy
purpose and aim in their lives, for which they trained and toiled and
fought. Don't you see?--the meaning is quite clear. We can have our
Quest too."
"Bless her dear heart, if she is not travelling thousands of years and
miles from Mrs. Trimmings!" exclaimed Phillis, who never could be
serious long. "Well, Nannie, I understand you, though you are a trifle
vague. We will have our Quest and our unattainable standard; and I
will be your maiden knight--yours and Dulce's.
"'How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favors fall!
For them I'll battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall.'"
And when she had repeated this she rose, laughing, and said they were
all a little demented; and what did they mean by wasting their time
when there were three dresses to be cut out? and Dulce must have the
work fixed for the sewing-machine.
For the next hour there was little talk, only the snipping sound of
scissors and the rustling of silken breadths, and sometimes the swish
and the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning
and tappings of Dulce's sewing machine, like a dozen or two of
woodpeckers at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more
poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads
were full of business.
But in the afternoon, when things were in progress and looked
promising, and Mrs. Challoner had had her nap, and was busy over some
sleeves that they had given her to keep her quiet and satisfy her
maternal conscience that she was helping her girls, Phillis did hear a
little about Miss Drummond's visit. The sewing machine, which they
worked by turns, had stopped for a time, and they were all three round
the table, sewing and fixing as busily as possible: and Phillis,
remembering Sir Galahad, dared not say she was tired, only she looked
out on the lengthening shadows with delight, and thought about tea and
an evening walk just to stretch her cramped muscles. And if one day
seemed so long, how would a week of days appear before the blessed
Sunday gave them a few hours of freedom?
It was at this moment that Nan, with fine tact, broke the silence that
was good for work, but was apt to wax drowsy in time:
"Miss Milner's dress is getting on well. How fast you two girls work!
and mammie is doing the sleeves beautifully. Another afternoon you
must let the work rest, mammie, and read to us, or Phillis will get
restive. By the bye, Dulce, we have not told her a word about Miss
Drummond's visit."
"No, indeed: was it not good of her to come so soon?" exclaimed Dulce.
"She told us she wanted to be our first customer, and seemed quite
disappointed when we said that we were bound in honor and mere
gratitude to send Miss Milner's dress home first. 'Not that I am in a
hurry for my dress, for nobody cares what I wear,' she said, quite
cheerfully; 'but I wanted to be the first on your list.' I wish we
could oblige her, for she is a nice, unaffected little thing, and I am
beginning to like her, though she is a little fussy."
"But she was as meek as a lamb about her dress," added Nan, who was a
first-rate needle-woman, and could work rapidly while she talked.
"Just fancy, Phil! she wanted to have a jacket with tabs and loose
sleeves, just for comfort and coolness."
"Loose sleeves and a jacket!" almost gasped Phillis, for the princess
skirts were then worn, and jackets were consigned to oblivion for the
time being. "I hope you told her, Nan, that we had never worked for
Mrs. Noah, neither had Mrs. Shem ever honored us by her custom."
"Well, no, Phillis; I was not quite so impertinent, and clever
speeches of that sort never occur to me until you say them. But I told
Miss Drummond that I could not consent to spoil her lovely dress in
that way; and then she laughed and gave in, and owned she knew nothing
about fashions, and that her sister Grace always ordered her clothes
for her, because she chose such ugly things. She sat and chatted such
a long time with us; she had only just gone when you came home."
"And she told us such a lot about this wonderful Grace," went on
Dulce: "she says Archie quite worships her.--Well, mammie," as Mrs.
Challoner poised her needle in mid-air and regarded her youngest
daughter with unfeigned astonishment, "I am only repeating Miss
Drummond's words; she said 'Archie.'"
"But, my dear, there was no need to be so literal," returned Mrs.
Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school,
and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or
idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young
daughters: to speak of any young man except Dick without the
ceremonious prefix was a heinous misdemeanor in her eyes. Dulce would
occasionally trespass, and was always rebuked with much gravity. "You
could have said 'her brother,' could you not?"
"Oh, mammie, I am sure Providence intended you for an old maid, and
you have not fulfilled your destiny," retorted Dulce, who was rarely
awed by her mother's solemnity. "All that fuss because I said
'Archie!' Oh, I forgot, that name is sacred: the Rev. Archibald
Drummond adores his sister Grace."
"And she must be very nice," returned Mrs. Challoner with an indulgent
smile at her pet Dulce. "I am sure, from what Miss Drummond told us
this morning, that she must be a most superior person. Why, Phillis,
she teaches all her four younger sisters, and one of them is sixteen.
Miss Drummond says she is never out of the school-room, except for an
hour or two in the evening, when her father and brothers come home.
There are two more brothers, I think she said. Dear what a large
family! and Miss Drummond hinted that they were not well off."
"I should like to know that Grace," began Phillis; and then she shook
her head reflectively. "No, depend upon it, we should be disappointed
in her: family paragons are generally odious to other folk. Most
likely she wears spectacles, and is a thin thread-papery sort of
person."
"On the contrary, she is a sweet-looking girl, with large melancholy
eyes; for Miss Drummond showed us her photograph. So much for your
imagination, Phil?" and Dulce looked triumphant. "And she is only
twenty-two, and, though not pretty, just the sort of face one could
love."
"Some people's swans turn out to be geese in the end," remarked
Phillis, provokingly; but she registered at the same time a mental
resolve that she would cross-examine Mr. Drummond on the earliest
opportunity about this wonderful sister of his. Oh, it was no marvel
if he did look down on them when they had not got brains enough to
earn their living except in this way! and Phillis stuck her needle
into Miss Milner's body-lining so viciously that it broke.
The sharp click roused Nan's vigilance, and she looked up, and was at
once full of pity for Phillis's pale face.
"You are tired, Phil, and so are we all," she said, brightly; "and, as
it is our first day of work, we will not overdo ourselves. Mammie, if
you will make the tea, we will just tidy up, and look out the patterns
for you to match the trimmings and buttons to-morrow;" for this same
business of matching was rather hailed by Mrs. Challoner as a relief
and amusement.
Phillis grumbled a little over this additional labor, though, at the
same time, no one worked harder than she; but she was careful to
explain that it was her right, as a freeborn Britoness, to grumble,
and that it was as much a relief to her peculiar constitution as a
good long yawn is to some people.
"And it answers two purposes," as she observed; "for it airs the
lungs, and relieves the mind, and no one takes any more notice than if
I set the wind blowing. And thankful I am, and every mother's child of
us, that Dorothy is approaching this room with her dust-pan and brush.
Dorothy, I have a nice little sum for you to do. How many snippets of
green and black silk go to a dust-pan? Count them, and subtract all
the tacking-thread, and Dulce's pins."
"Phillis, you are just feverish from overfatigue and sitting so long
in one place, for you are used to running about." And Nan took her by
the shoulders, and marched her playfully to the small parlor, where
Mrs. Challoner was waiting for them.
"Come, girls!" she said, cheerfully. "Dorothy has baked your favorite
little cakes, and there are new-laid eggs for those who are hungry;
and I am sure you all earned your tea, darlings. And, oh, Phillis! how
tired you look!" And Mrs. Challoner looked round on each face in turn,
in the unwise but loving way of mothers.
This was too much for Phillis; and she interlaced her fingers and put
them suddenly and sternly over her mother's eyes.
"Now, mammie, promise."
"Phillis, my dear, how can you be so absurd!" but Mrs. Challoner
strove in vain to release herself. Phillis's fingers had iron tenacity
in them when she chose.
"A thing like this must be nipped in the bud," pronounced Phillis,
apostrophizing her laughing sisters. "You must not look at us in that
fashion every evening, as though we were sheep in a pen, or rabbits
for sale. You will be weighing us next; and my nerves will not stand
it. No, mother; here I strike. I will not be looked at in that
manner."
"But, Phillis--Oh, you nonsensical child!"
"Personal remarks are to be tabooed from this moment. You must not
say, 'How tired you look!' or 'How pale you are!' It is not manners at
the Friary, and it is demoralizing. I am ten times more tired this
minute than I was before you told me so."
"Very well, Phillis; but you must let me pour out the tea." And then
Phillis subsided. But she had started the fun, and Dulce soon took it
up and set the ball rolling. And Dorothy, working hard with her
dust-pan and brushes, heard the merriment, and her old face lighted
up.
"Bless their sweet faces!--pretending to be happy, just to cheer up
the mistress, and make believe it is only a game they are having!"
muttered the old woman, as she paused to listen. "But, if I am not
mistaken, Miss Phillis, poor dear, is just ready to drop with fatigue.
Only to hear her, one would think she was as perky as possible."
When the evening meal was over, Mrs. Challoner leaned back in her
chair and made a little speech to her daughters:
"Thank you, my dears. You have done me so much good. Now, if you want
to please me, you will all three put on your hats and take a nice long
walk together."
The girls looked at each other, and every pair of eyes said, as
plainly as possible, "What a delicious idea! But only two can go, and
I intend to be the filial victim." But Mrs. Challoner was too quick
for them. "I said all three," she remarked, very decidedly. "If one
offers to stay with me, I shall just put myself to bed and lock the
door; but if you will be good, and enjoy this lovely evening, I will
take my book in the garden and be quite happy until you come back to
me." And when they saw that she meant it, and would only be worried by
a fuss, they went off as obediently as possible.
They walked very sedately down the Braidwood Road, and past the White
House; but when they got into the town, Phillis hurried them on a
little: "I don't want people. It is air and exercise and freedom for
which I am pining." And she walked so fast that they had some trouble
to keep up with her.
But when they had left every trace of human habitation behind them,
and were strolling down the rough, uneven beach, towards a narrow
strip of sand, that would soon be covered by the advancing tide,
Phillis said, in an odd, breathless way, "Nan, just look round and see
if there be any one in sight, before, behind, or around us;" and Nan,
though in some little surprise, did at once as she was bidden, in the
most thorough manner. For she looked up at the sky first, as though
she were afraid of balloons or possible angels; and then at the sea,
which she scanned narrowly, so that not even a fish could escape her;
and after that she beat the boundaries of the land.
"No, there is not a creature in sight except ourselves and Laddie,"
she answered.
"Very well," answered Phillis promptly. "Then, if it be all safe, and
the Hadleigh wits are away wool gathering, and you will not tell
mother, I mean to have a race with Dulce, as far as we can run along
the shore; and if I do not win----" And here she pursed up her lips
and left her sentence unfinished, as though determined to be
provoking.
"We shall see about that," returned Dulce, accepting the challenge in
a moment; for she was always ready to follow a good lead.
"Oh, you foolish children?" observed Nan, in her staid fashion. But
she did not offer the slightest remonstrance, knowing of old that
unless Phillis found some safety-valve she would probably wax
dangerous. So she called Laddie to her, and held him whining and
struggling, for he wanted to stretch his little legs too; thinking a
race was good for dogs as well as for girls. But Nan would not hear of
it for a moment: he might trip them up and cause another sprained
ankle.
"Now, Nan, you must be umpire, and say, One, two, three!" And Nan
again obeys, and then watches them with interest. Oh, how pretty it
was, if only any one could have seen it, except the crabs and the
star-fish, and they never take much notice: the foreground of the
summer sea coming up with little purple rushes and a fringe of foam;
the yellow sand, jagged, uneven, with salt-water pools here and there;
the two girls in their light dresses skimming over the ground with
swift feet, skirting the pools, jumping lightly over stones, even
climbing a breakwater, then running along another level piece of
sand,--Dulce a little behind, but Phillis as erect and sure-footed as
Atalanta.
Now Nan has lost them, and puts Laddie down and prepares to follow. In
spite of her staidness, she would have dearly loved a run too; only
she thinks of Dick, and forbears.
Dulce, who is out of breath, fears she must give up the race, and
begins to pant and drop behind in earnest, and to wish salt water were
fresh, and then to dread the next breakwater as a hopeless obstacle;
but Phillis, who is still as fresh as possible, squares her elbows as
she has seen athletes do, and runs lightly up to it, unmindful and
blissfully ignorant of human eyes behind a central hole.
Some one who is of a classical turn has been thinking of the daughter
of Iasus and Clymene, and cries out, "Bravo, Atalanta! but where is
Milanion, that he has forgotten the golden apples?" And Phillis,
stricken dumb by the question and the sudden apparition of a bearded
face behind the breakwater, remains standing as though she were carved
in stone.