I
Mrs. Ascott and Theodora were up in the attic searching through trunks
and boxes for a fan that would harmonize with Eileen’s graduating
dress. Lavinia had made a special trip to St. Louis in quest of
accessories, and had returned with a marvel of lacquer sticks and
landscape, befitting a mandarin’s banquet board--and Lary had said
things that threw the family into a superlative state of stress.
“Mamma and my brother don’t gee worth a cent,” the child lamented,
peering with eager eyes into the shadowy recesses of a chest that ought
to yield treasure. “For the last month, they’re on each other’s nerves
all the time. It’s mostly Lary’s fault ... and ... I believe he does
it to save papa. My poor daddy can’t do a blessed thing the way it
ought to be. And you know, mamma gets good and mad at only one of us
at a time. Eileen says, if she felt that way about her people, she’d
clean up the whole bunch at once, and get it out of her ‘cistern.’
But mamma’s just naturally economical, and this way she can make her
grouches go farther. We thought Drusilla would quit us, last week,
because mamma laid her out so hard--when she scorched the bottom layer
of a short cake. So I guess it was a good thing Lary said what he did
about the fan.”
“Lightning rod for Drusilla,” Larimore Trench called, from the foot of
the narrow stairway. “You don’t mind if I come up? I’d like to see
the old attic again.” His face was beaming and his gesture catlike as
he mounted the steep stairs. “Bob and Syd and I used to have some wild
times up here. I wonder if the ghosts of our youth ever disturb your
slumbers, sweet Lady Judith. We were a rough trio, in our day.”
“You and Sydney Schubert rough! I wonder what you would call my two
incorrigible brothers.”
“Yes, but they were,” Theo broke in. “Bob could get them to do
anything. We got awful quiet at our house after he went away. Come over
here, Lary, where you can get the breeze. I’ll let you have half of my
box to sit on.” With a wisp of paper she wiped the dust from the top of
a packing case that bore in bold black letters the legend: “Books--Keep
Dry.”
“Look at this, Lady Judith!” The small frame shook with reminiscent
mirth. “It belongs to mamma ... twenty volumes of general information,
in doses to match the monthly payments. ‘Keep Dry!’ You couldn’t wet
’em with a fire hose. We had to leave them here, because Lary planned
the book-cases, in the other house, so that they wouldn’t quite go in.
And mamma had one awful set-to with Professor Ferguson when he had
the nerve to use her box of canned culture to lay out his herbarium
specimens for mounting. Sylvia said it taught mamma a lesson. If she
wanted to rent Vine Cottage, she couldn’t go on deciding how often the
silver must be polished, and what the tenant could do with the old
plunder she left in the attic. _Plunder!_ Think of it!”
“She has been an exemplary ‘landlord’ since I have been here,” Judith
said, ignoring Lary and his too evident embarrassment. “I don’t in the
least mind her ordering Dutton around. It saves my humiliating myself
in the eyes of my gardener. How was I to know that you can’t grow sweet
potatoes from seed, and that Brussels sprouts aren’t good until after
frost?”