"Yes, it was a pleasant funeral," said Miss Chatterwits, as she sat
sewing one morning at Miss Theodora's. Kate, who was present, laughed at
the speech, although she understood Miss Chatterwits' idiosyncracies in
the matter of funerals. To the latter, funerals were sources of real
delight, and few at the West End were ungraced by her presence. In her
best gown of shining black silk, with its rows and rows of bias ruffles,
she seemed as necessary to the proper conduct of the ceremony as the
undertaker himself. With her wide acquaintance among the people of the
neighborhood, she could decide exactly the proper place for each
mourner; she knew just who belonged in the back and who in the front
parlor, and the grave demeanor with which she assigned each one his seat
hardly hid her air of bustling satisfaction.
Miss Theodora and Kate were therefore not shocked when she repeated,
"Yes, it was a pleasant funeral," continuing: "I declare, I don't think
there was a soul there I didn't know. I was able to be real useful
showing them where to sit. You should have seen the flowers. It took us
the best part of a day to fix them. The family, of course, felt too bad
to take much notice of the flowers, but I guess they enjoyed the choir
singing. Mary Timpkins herself would have been pleased to see how well
everything went off, for she always was so fussy about things."
Then, as no one interrupted her, she continued: "It's just a shame,
Miss Theodora, that you did not go yourself. Mr. Blunt made the most
edifying remarks you ever heard. Why, I almost cried, though you know
I've had a great deal of experience in such occasions; and if you'd
heard him I'm sure you'd have been miserable for the rest of the day."
Kate smiled at the thought of the pleasure her cousin had missed in
escaping this misery, but Miss Theodora, not noticing Miss Chatterwits'
humor, responded merely:
"Ah! the death of so young a person is always sad."
"Especially under such painful circumstances," added Miss Chatterwits.
"What circumstances?" asked Kate, now interested.
"Love!" answered Miss Chatterwits, solemnly. "She died of love."
"Love!" echoed Kate. "Shakespeare says nobody ever died of love." Then,
with an afterthought: "Perhaps he was thinking only of men. But why do
you think Miss Timpkins died of love? She didn't look as foolish as
that."
"Well,"--and Miss Chatterwits shook her head in joyful significance, for
it always pleased her to have news of this kind to tell,--"I guess if
Hiram Bradstreet hadn't gone and left her she'd be alive to-day."
"What nonsense!" said Kate.
"Oh, you can smile, but I've sewed at her house by the week running, and
he'd come sometimes two afternoons together to ask her to go to walk
somewhere; and even if she was in the middle of trying on she'd drop
everything and run, looking as pleased as could be."
"Any one would look pleased to escape a trying on."
"Oh, you can make light of it. But once when I said I guessed I'd be
fitting a wedding dress soon, she colored right up, and said she, 'Oh,
we're only friends.'"
"That's nothing."
"Perhaps it was nothing when Mary Timpkins began to fade the very
minute she heard Hiram Bradstreet was engaged to a girl he met on the
steamer last summer. Why did he go to Europe anyway?"
"Probably because Mary Timpkins wouldn't marry him; for truly, Miss
Chatterwits, I'm going to agree with Dr. Jones that she died of typhoid
fever."
"Maybe,--after she'd run herself down worrying about Hiram Bradstreet."
"Oh, no. Hiram Bradstreet, worrying about her, fled to Europe in
despair, and let his heart be caught in the rebound by that girl on the
steamer."
This sensible conclusion, though at the time uttered half in fun, was
characteristic of Kate. She was loath to believe that a well balanced
girl could die of love. Love in the abstract troubled her as little as
love in the concrete. She seldom indulged in sentimental thoughts, much
less in sentimental conversation.
In their distaste for sentimentality, Ernest and Kate met on common
ground; and even Mrs. Digby, though at one time disposed to
discountenance their intimacy, at length decided there was no danger of
her somewhat self-willed daughter's falling in love with her penniless
cousin. In time, however, as Ernest boy-like, found his pleasure more
and more in things outside the house, Miss Theodora and Kate drew nearer
together.
The elder woman had always had a certain pleasure in acting as friend
and helper to a little circle of poor people, of whom there were so many
on the narrow streets descending toward the north. These were not the
poor whites to whom Miss Theodora's mother had been a Lady Bountiful,
but "darkies," as Diantha called them, of mysterious origin and of still
more mysterious habits. They were crowded together in queer-smelling
houses, in narrow lanes and alleys, or in the upper stories over shops
in the squalid main thoroughfares of the district which some people
still call "Nigger Hill."
"It doesn't seem a bit like Boston," Kate would say, clinging to Miss
Theodora's arm while they went in and out of the rickety dwellings,
where stout black women, with heads swathed in bandannas, or shoeless
children in ragged clothes saluted them respectfully. Although Miss
Theodora knew nothing of modern scientific charities, she tried to make
reform and reward go hand in hand.
"I feel," she said occasionally, "as if I oughtn't to help Beverly
Brown's family when I know the man is drinking; but I can't bear to see
those children without shoes, or let Araminta suffer for food with that
baby to care for."
"Of course you can't," Kate would answer, emphatically: "and Moses and
Aaron Brown are the very cunningest twins any one could imagine, even
if they are bow-legged." And then Kate, opening her little silk bag,
would display within a collection of oranges, sticks of candy, and even
painted wooden toys which she had bought on her way through Charles
Street. "Come, Cousin Theodora," she would cry, "put on your hat and
coat, and let us go down and see the twins, and let me carry this
basket."
Or again: "There isn't any harm in my just getting some of this bright
calico for aprons for Araminta, and you don't care if I buy mittens for
the twins," she would say entreatingly; for Miss Theodora, always
careful of money herself, often had to restrain her young cousin's
expenditures, at least in the matter of clothes. As regarded food, it
was different.
When Kate, stopping in front of one of the little provision shops, with
their fly-specked windows, through which was dimly seen an array of
wilted vegetables and doubtful-looking meats, decided to order a dinner
for this one or that of her proteges, Miss Theodora had not the heart to
hinder. But I will do her the credit to say that she never encouraged
the giving of dinners to those whose need was caused by vice. In the
future of the dark-skinned boys and girls Miss Theodora took a great
interest. She realized that in the public schools they had their
opportunity; and she saw with regret that not all who were educated made
the best use of their education. Restless, unwilling to take the kind of
work which alone was likely to fall to their lot, some of the young
girls, educated or uneducated, drifted into ways which the older women
of their race spoke of with the strongest disapprobation.
"They's a wuthless lot, the hull of them, and I wouldn't try to do
nothing for them if I was you," Diantha often exclaimed, when Miss
Theodora admitted how sorely the problem of these dusky people pressed
upon her. Yet Diantha herself was almost certain to call her mistress'
attention to the next case of need on which she herself stumbled in her
wanderings among her people. Or, as likely as not, when Miss Theodora
was sought out by some poor creature in real or pretended misery, the
present emergency would overthrow all theories.
In one of the hill streets there was a home for colored old women,
holding not a large number of inmates, but still holding, as Kate
expressed it, "a very contented crowd"--much more contented, indeed,
than many of the dwellers in the "Old Ladies' Home," the refuge for
white women who had seen better days.
"I went to see old Mrs. Smith," said Kate one day, speaking of an inmate
of the latter institution. "She was sitting with her blind drawn,
looking as glum as could be. 'Why don't you raise the curtain?' I
asked. 'You have such a beautiful view of the river.' 'Oh, yes,' she
said, 'beautiful for anybody who likes rivers.' Do you know she'd rather
sit moping in a corner all day than try to get some pleasure out of the
lovely view across the river from her window! She enjoys being miserable
now, just because she has seen 'better days.'"
"There are a great many people like her in the world," smiled Miss
Theodora.
"Well, I prefer old Auntie Jane up in the colored women's home. She says
that she never was as well off as she has been since she came to the
home. She has a little window box with a small geranium and some white
elysium in blossom; and she says that it reminds her of the old
plantation where she grew up. She can see nothing from her window but
houses across the narrow street; but she is a great deal happier than
Mrs. Smith with all her view."
[Illustration]