Ernest, himself, grew up without any social prejudices. His aunt often
wondered at this, yet, like many sensible people, she did not try to
impress him with her own views. As one by one the dwelling houses on
Charles Street were changed into shops, he only rejoiced that Miss
Theodora wouldn't have to send so far for her groceries and provisions.
But Miss Theodora drew the line here. She had always been able to go to
the market every day, and no thrifty housewife needs a provision shop
under her very nose, she said.
Her one exception in favor of neighborhood shopping was made for the
little thread and needle shop on the corner below her house. Even a
person who doesn't have many new gowns occasionally needs tapes and
needles, and may find it convenient to buy them near at hand.
This shop was a delight to Ernest, and in the days when his chin hardly
reached the level of the counter, he loved to stand and gaze at the rows
of jars filled with variegated sticks of candy, jaw-breakers and pickled
limes; for the two maiden ladies who kept the shop sold many things
besides needles and thread. In the little glass show-case, in addition
to mittens and scissors and an occasional beautiful fan, and heaps of
gay marbles, was a pile of highly-colored story books, "The Tale of
Goody Two Shoes" and others of that ilk, and mysterious looking sheets
of paper, which needed only the manipulation of skilful scissors to
change them into life-like paper dolls with elaborate wardrobes. Ernest,
of course, took little interest in the paper dolls,--he bought chiefly
marbles; but his cousin, Kate Digby, whenever she was permitted to spend
a day at the West End, was a devoted patron of the little shop, and
saved all her pennies to increase her household of dolls. Indeed, she
confided to Ernest that when she grew up she was going to have a shop
just like the one kept by the Misses Bascom. If Mrs. Stuart Digby had
heard her say this, she would have wondered where in the world her
daughter had acquired a taste for anything so ordinary as trade.
A block or two away from the thread and needle shop was a shop that Miss
Theodora abhorred. Within they sold every kind of thing calculated to
draw the stray pennies from the pockets of the school children who
passed it daily. Its windows, with their display of gaudy and vulgar
illustrated papers, gave her positive pain. A generation ago ladies had
not acquired the habit of rushing into print with every matter of
reform; otherwise Miss Theodora might have sent a letter to the
newspaper, signed "Prudentia," or something of that kind, deploring the
fact that a shop like this should be allowed to exist near a school,
drawing pennies from the pockets of the school children, at the same
time that it vitiated their artistic sense.
Ernest, as I have said, grew up without marked local or social
prejudices. Many of his spare pennies went into the money drawer of the
corner shop, and much of his spare time he spent with the workmen at the
cabinet-makers' near by. For little workshops were beginning to appear
in the neighborhood of lower Charles Street, and some of their
proprietors had cut away the front of an old house, in order to build a
window to display their wares.
Ernest loved to gaze in at the shining faucets in the plumber's window,
and horrified his aunt by announcing one day that when he was a man he
meant to be either a plumber or a cabinet-maker. Among them all he
preferred the cabinet-maker's. Everything going on there interested him,
and the workmen, glad to answer his questions, showed him ways of doing
things which he put into practice at home.
For Miss Theodora had given Ernest a basement room to work in,
stipulating only that he should not bring more than three boys at a time
into the house to share his labors. His joy was unbounded one Christmas
when his cousin, Richard Somerset, sent him a turning lathe. Almost the
first use to which he put it was to make a footstool, with delicately
tapering legs, for his aunt's birthday. He tied it up in brown paper
himself, and wound a great string about it with many knots.
"Law!" said Diantha, who stood by as Miss Theodora slowly untied the
bulky package, "what's them boys been up to now? I believe it's some
mischief."
"Now, old Di, you're mean," cried Ernest, dancing around in excitement
in the narrow hall-way outside the bedroom door.
But Miss Theodora, as she bent over the package, tugging at the strings,
caught sight of some sprawling letters that resolved themselves into "A
birthday Present from your LOVEING nephew;" so, shaking her head at
Diantha, she responded, loudly enough for Ernest to hear, and with no
comment on the bad spelling, "Oh, no, it's a beautiful present from
Ernest." And then Ernest ran in and undid the rest of the knots, and,
setting the footstool triumphantly on its four legs on the floor, said:
"Now, you'll always use it, won't you, Aunt Teddy?"
Of course Miss Theodora, as she kissed him, promised to use, and kept
her promise, in spite of the fact that the little footstool--less
comfortable than her well-worn carpet hassock--wasn't exactly steady on
its feet. But although she so thoroughly appreciated Ernest's
thoughtfulness, Miss Theodora did not regard the footstool with absolute
pleasure. She was by no means sure that she approved of Ernest's skill
in handicrafts. She wondered sometimes whether she ought to permit a
probable lawyer to spend so much energy in work which could hardly go
toward helping him in his profession. Yet, after all, she hadn't the
heart to interfere with Ernest's mechanical tastes, when she saw that
gratifying them gave him so much pleasure. She never forgot her fright
one day on the Nahant boat, when Ernest, barely seven years old, was
missing, and she found him only after a long search at the door of the
engine room.
"You'd ought to be an engineer when you're grown up," she heard a gruff
voice say, while Ernest meekly replied: "Well, I'd like to, but I've got
to be a lawyer."
She did not scold Ernest as she took his hand to lead him up stairs, and
she even lingered while he tried to put her in possession of all his own
knowledge.
"This gentleman," he said apologetically, "has been explaining his
engine to me," and the "gentleman," rubbing a light streak across his
sooty face, turned to her with a sincere, "That there boy of yours has a
big head, ma'am, for machinery, and, begging your pardon, if I was you
I'd put him out to a machinist when he's a little bigger."
The plainness of Miss Theodora's dress may have placed her in this man's
eye on the plane of those people who regularly sent their children to
learn trades. Although in her mind she resented the suggestion, she
listened attentively to Ernest as he tried, with glowing cheek and
rapid tongue, to explain the various parts of the engine. If Miss
Theodora never perhaps had more than a vague idea of the functions of
piston and valve and the wonders of the governor, over which Ernest grew
so eloquent, she was at least a sympathetic listener in this as in all
other things that he cared for.
[Illustration]