with us, you'll be a regular treat."
"Stay with you?" cried Polly, wonderingly.
"Yes; what," turning to her mother, "haven't you asked her yet, mamma?"
"No; I've only talked with Mrs. Banks."
"Well, I'll talk to Polly. Polly, we've been looking for a nice little
girl like you to come and stay at our house. I'm lame, and I can't do
much. When mamma came home and told me about you and the bank and the
paint-box and the valentine, I said, 'That's the girl for me; let's go
and ask her to come.' And _won't_ you come, Polly?"
"I--I'd like to if--if Jane can come too."
"Don't. Polly. I can't--I can't!" whispered Jane.
"Oh, mamma, mamma!" cried the lame Elise, entreatingly.
"Mamma" turned to Mrs. Banks. "If she _would_ only come and help
us,--come and try us, at least,--I'm sure we could make satisfactory
arrangements."
Mrs. Banks nodded, and smiled approval. "Of course Jane can go if she
chooses."
"And you _will_ choose,--you will, won't you, Jane?"
"Course she will," cried Polly; and then everybody laughed, and
everything was as good as settled from that moment. Then it was that
Polly burst out, "I should be puffickly happy now if I only knew jus'
who that mess'nger was that sent my valentine."
"Tell her, mamma, tell her!" called out Elise; and "mamma" bent down,
and said to Polly,--
"It was somebody who saw what a loving heart a certain little girl had
when she chose to give up her paint-box to buy her dear Jane a
valentine."
"'Twas you, 'twas you!" cried Polly, joyfully. "Oh, I jus' love
Valentine's Day, and I knew it must be Somebody's birfday,--some very
good Somebody!"
SIBYL'S SLIPPER.
CHAPTER I.
When Sir William Howe succeeded General Gage as governor and military
commander of the New England province, he at once set to work to make
himself and the King's cause popular in a social way by giving a series
of fine entertainments in the stately Province House.
To these entertainments were bidden all the Boston townsfolk who were
loyal to the British crown. Amongst such, none were more prominent or
made more welcome than Mr. Jeffrey Merridew and his pretty young niece,
Sibyl.
Mr. Merridew was a stanch royalist, though he was by no means a violent
hater of the rebels. Many of them were his old friends and neighbors;
and his only brother, Dr. Ephraim Merridew,--Sibyl's father,--was a
rebel at heart, though in far-away Barbadoes, where he was at that time
engaged in business, he could not serve the rebel cause in person, as he
would gladly have done. But he left behind him a son who, in full
sympathy with his father's views, ranged himself boldly on the rebel
side, as part and parcel of the American army.
A rebel relative in Barbadoes was not a matter to trouble oneself about
greatly, but a rebel relative on the spot, so to speak,--for young
Ephraim was only four miles away at the Cambridge rallying-ground,--was
a different thing; and, amiable and easy-going as Mr. Jeffrey Merridew
was disposed to be, his nephew's close proximity could not, under the
peculiar circumstances, but be embarrassing and disturbing on occasions;
for the young man, besides being his nephew, was Sibyl's brother, and
Sibyl, as a member of a royalist's family,--for her father on his
departure for Barbadoes had left his motherless girl in her uncle's
charge,--could not, of course, be allowed free intercourse with one who
had placed himself in an attitude of active hostility to the royal
cause.
When Sibyl was apprised of this dictum, she at once made passionate
protest against it. "What harm do the King's soldiers think poor Eph can
do them by now and then paying a visit to his sister?" she asked her
uncle scornfully.
"Harm? You are very young, Sibyl, and don't understand these things.
Your brother has chosen very foolishly to join the rebel forces, and so
has made himself one of our acknowledged enemies; and I never heard of
declared enemies in time of war walking in and out of each other's
houses like tame cats," answered Mr. Merridew, sarcastically.
"But Eph, such a boy as Eph, only nineteen, only two years older than I!
What harm could he do now, more than he has ever done, by coming to his
uncle's house as a visitor?" still persisted Sibyl, rather foolishly.
"What harm!" exclaimed Mr. Merridew, impatiently. "What a child you are,
Sibyl! Why, his coming here would compromise me fatally with the royal
government. I should be suspected of disloyalty, and do you think that
he, your brother, could be in any such communication with us and fail to
see and hear many things that might bring us disaster if reported to his
officers?"
"You think Eph would be so mean as to tell tales?" exclaimed Sibyl, in
high indignation.
"Tell tales!" repeated Mr. Merridew, flinging back his head with
irrepressible laughter at Sibyl's ignorance. Why, my dear, the reporting
of important facts, however gained in times of war, is part of war
tactics; it is not called 'telling tales.'"
"And would you--would you, if you were in Ephraim's camp as a
visitor,--would you--"
"Tell tales?" laughed Mr. Merridew. "Indeed I would, if I heard anything
worth telling,--anything that I thought would save the cause I believed
to be a righteous cause." Then, more seriously: "Why, Sibyl, it would be
my duty to do it."
"Oh! oh!" cried Sibyl, "it is odious, odious, all this war business."
"Yes, I grant you that; but who is to blame for bringing this odious
business upon us? Who but these foolish malcontents, these rebels,
like--"
"Like my father and my brother," broke in Sibyl, hotly, as Mr. Merridew
hesitated.
"Yes, like your father and your brother, I am sorry to say," concluded
her uncle, gravely.
"No, no, no!" cried Sibyl, excitedly. "It is not they who are to blame.
They are good and brave and wise. They only want justice and fair play.
It is the King's folk who are to blame,--the King's folk who want to
oppress the people with unjust taxes, that they may live in greater
grandeur."
Mr. Merridew stared in silent astonishment at this unexpected outburst.
Then, in a severer tone than his niece had ever heard from his lips, he
said,--
"So this is the treasonable talk you have heard from your brother; these
are the teachings that he has been instilling into you? Ah, it is none
too soon that you are cut off from the influence of that headstrong
boy."
"But it was my father who instilled these teachings into my brother.
They are his principles, and they are my principles too!"
"Your principles!" and Mr. Merridew, his sense of humor immensely
tickled at the sound of this fine word, that rolled off with such an
assumption of dignity from those rosy young lips, burst into a great
laugh. Yet then and there he said to himself, "That Jackanapes of a boy,
to fill her head with this treasonable stuff! But we'll see, we'll see
if we can't crowd all such stuff out with livelier things when we have
those fine doings at the Province House Sir William is talking of. Her
principles! The little parrot!" and he laughed again.
CHAPTER II.
"And you're to dance the last dance with me, remember, Miss Merridew."
"Indeed, Sir Harry, I will not promise you that."
"You will not promise? But you _have_ promised."
"_Have_ promised? What do you mean, sir? I think you are forgetting
yourself!" and Miss Sibyl Merridew lifted up her graceful head with a
little air of hauteur that was by no means unbecoming to her piquant
beauty.
But young Sir Harry Willing was not to be put down by this pretty little
provincial,--not he; and so, lifting up _his_ head with an air of
hauteur, he said to Miss Sibyl,--
"I crave Miss Merridew's pardon, but perhaps if she will reflect a
moment she will recall what she said to me yester morning when I begged
her to give me the pleasure of dancing the last minuet with her
to-night."
Waving her great plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at
her companion, and answered in a little sweetly impertinent tone,--
"But I never reflect."
"So I should judge, madam," retorted the youth, wrathfully; "but
perhaps," he went on, "if Miss Merridew will deign to bestow a glance
upon this"--and the young fellow pulled from his pocket a gold-mounted
card and letter case, out of which he took a tablet upon which was
written: "Met Miss Sibyl Merridew this morning on the mall. She promised
to dance the last minuet with me to-morrow night. Mem. Send roses if
they are to be had in the town!"
Sibyl blushed as she read this. Then lifting the flowers--Sir Harry's
roses--to her face for a moment, she dropped a demure courtesy and said,
with a gleam of fun in her eyes,--
"If Sir Harry finds that it is necessary for _him_ to recall his friends
and engagements by memorandum notes, he certainly cannot expect an
untutored provincial maid, who carries no such orderly appliance about
with her, to charge _her_ mind unaided."
"An untutored provincial maid!" exclaimed Sir Harry, all his wrath
extinguished by her pretty recognition of his flowers and his admiration
of her ready wit,--"an untutored provincial maid! By my faith, Miss
Sibyl, you'd put to shame many a court dame. But, hark, what's that? As
I live, the musicians are tuning up for the minuet." And smilingly he
held out his hand to her.
[Illustration: A very pretty pair]
"A very pretty pair," said more than one of the assembled company, as
the two took their places in the beautifully decorated ball-room; and as
the dance progressed, Mr. Jeffrey Merridew, watching his niece from his
post of observation, said to himself with, a congratulatory smile,--
"Where now are Miss Sibyl's fine rebel principles? I scarcely think they
would stand a test."
Almost at that very moment Sir Harry, boy as he was, spite of his
one-and-twenty years, was giving vent to a little boastful talk about
"our army" and "those undisciplined rebels who would never stand the
test against a full regiment of regulars."
"Why," Sir Harry declared at length, led on by Sibyl's air of great
interest, "we have positive information that their troops at Cambridge
have neither arms nor ammunition to carry on a defence, and they are in
a sorry condition every way; it is impossible for them to resist us
successfully. We shall literally sweep them off the face of the earth
if they attempt it."
"And you--the King's troops?" inquired Sibyl.
"We--well, we have been a little straitened ourselves for the munitions
of war," replied the young aide-de-camp, "but by to-morrow night a
vessel will arrive for us that will relieve all such necessities. Ah,"
with a gay smile, "what would not these rebels give to get possession of
this information, and put their cruisers on the alert to capture such a
prize!"
"But there is no possibility of this?"
"Not the slightest. But you are pale,--don't be alarmed; there is no
danger. The rebels have no suspicion of the expected arrival, we are
certain."
"But if they had?"
"Well, that might alter the case. Their seamen know their business
better than their landsmen."
All this in the pauses of the dance. When they started up again, the
music had accelerated its time, and down the great hall they led the way
at a fine pace; but in swinging about to return, Sir Harry felt his
companion falter.
"What is it?" he asked anxiously.
"My slipper," she replied with a vexed laugh; and, stooping as she
spoke, she whisked off a little satin shoe, the high hollow metal heel
of which had suddenly given way. Certainly no more dancing that night.
For that matter, though, it was near the end of the ball. But could not
_he_ do something? Sir Harry asked. He had tinkered gunscrews; why not a
slipper? No, no; nothing could be done then and there. A new heel must
be hammered and fitted on.
But then and there Sibyl had a sudden inspiration. _Something could_ be
done. She was to go to Madame Boutineau's rout the next evening. She
needed these very slippers for that occasion. Would Sir Harry--on his
way to his quarters that night--would he think it beneath his dignity to
leave the slippers at Anthony Styles the shoemaker's? It was just there
by the tavern at the sign of the gilded boot. He had only to drop the
shoe, with a message she would write to go with it, into the tunnel-box
by the door, and Anthony would find it by daylight and set to work upon
it at once, that she might not be disappointed, for it was a longish
job, she knew.
Beneath his dignity! Sir Harry laughed. He was only too glad to do her
bidding.
And would he then give her a bit of paper and pencil and take her to
the cloak-room for a moment?
Alone in the cloak-room, Sibyl wrote her message to Anthony Styles.
Folding the paper in the slipper, and wrapping the whole in her
pocket-handkerchief, she fastened the parcel securely with the silken
cord that had held her fan.
"And may I have the last dance to-morrow night?" asked Sir Harry,
smilingly, as he took leave of her a few minutes later.
"Perhaps, if I may depend upon you--and Anthony Styles," she answered.
Her eyes sparkled like dark jewels as she spoke; her cheeks burned like
red twin roses.
CHAPTER III.
Robe of satin and Brussels lace,
Knots of flowers and ribbons too,
Scattered about in every place,
For the revel is through.
And there, in the midst of all this pretty disorder of satin and lace
and flowers, sits Sibyl, far into the night, or rather morning, turning
over and over in her mind something that effectually banishes sleep.
By and by, as she turns it over for the twentieth time, she says aloud
to herself: "To think that it should be given to _me_ to do,--made _my_
duty! Uncle Jeffrey taught me that, as he has taught me many things
these past months,--to keep my own counsel, for one thing.
"Ah, Uncle Jeffrey, you have fancied me all these months naught but a
vain little puppet who could be led to forget anything in a round of
routs and balls. Well, I like the routs and balls dearly, dearly, but I
like something else better. I like what my father has taught us, what
my dear Eph is going to fight for, and perhaps die for, far, far better.
Yet I felt like a cheat to-night as I led Sir Harry on to tell me what
he did,--Sir Harry, who thinks me, as all the rest do, a stanch little
Tory, for I have kept my counsel indeed, and no one suspects. But oh, it
is odious, it is odious, this war business; yet I have been taught how
to do my duty, and I have done it. Yes, I have done my duty, for 'the
reporting of important facts, however gained, in times of war, is part
of war tactics.' Yes, these are your words, Uncle Jeffrey, and oh, how
they flashed up to me to-night when Sir Harry told me of the British
vessel, and how they fairly rung in my ears like an order, when it
suddenly came to me how I could get this important fact that I had
gained sent to the right quarter by means of good Anthony Styles and
that parcel-box of his, through which so many messages have gone safely.
"Oh, I could laugh, I could laugh, if I didn't shiver so, when I think
of it! Sir Harry, Sir Harry of all persons, dropping that message into
Anthony Styles's hands,--Anthony Styles, the stanch rebel whom they
think a stanch Tory! Oh, I could laugh, I could laugh! And now if
everything goes well,--if everything goes well, my dear rebels will not
be swept off the earth by British arms quite yet!
[Illustration: Sibyl's reflections]
"But, hark! that is the clock; it is striking one, and I out of bed and
gabbling to myself in this foolish way of mine, 'like a play-acting
woman,' as Uncle Jeffrey would say of me. But I will not stay up a
minute longer. So good-night, good-night, my dear rebels, g--ood-night!"
* * * * *
The clock was striking four the next afternoon when a weather-beaten
man, who had a look as if he had once been a seaman, knocked at the side
door of Mr. Jeffrey Merridew's mansion and asked to see young Mistress
Merridew.
"It's Shoemaker Styles," the maid informed Sibyl, "and he says you must
come down and try on the slipper he has brought; he's not sure about the
heel. He's in the hall-room, mem."
It was with a wildly beating heart that Sibyl, obeying this summons, ran
down to the little hall-room where Anthony Styles awaited her.
He stood with the slipper in his hand as she entered the room; and
before he could close the door behind her, he called out in a frank,
loud voice: "I thought you had better try on the shoe, miss; I wasn't
sure of the heel."
The moment the door was closed, however, he came forward eagerly, and in
a low tone said: "It's all right, little mistress. I heard the click of
the tunnel-box last night, for I hadn't turned in, and afore many
minutes I was up and off in my boat with the message in my head; I burnt
the paper! There was a stiff breeze, and I reached the cutter in the
quickest time I ever made, and got back afore daylight with nobody the
wiser. Shoemaker Styles understands his old sailor business better than
shoemaking," with a grim laugh, "and no Tory knows these waters as I
do."
"And it's all right, and the end will be all right?" faltered Sibyl,
anxiously.
"All right! You'll know for yourself by nightfall, perhaps; and now God
bless you, little mistress. You've done a great service; and if ever
Anthony Styles can sarve you, he'll do it with a whole heart,--God bless
you, God bless you!" and with these words Shoemaker Styles hurried off,
leaving Sibyl with the slipper still in her hand, and both of them quite
oblivious of that important trying-on process.
The day after the ball was a busy one for Sir Harry Willing, and it was
not until late in the afternoon that he felt himself at liberty to take
his accustomed saunter about town.
As he came in sight of the gilded boot, he smilingly thought: "I wonder
if Shoemaker Styles has done his duty by the little slipper; if he has,
I shall dance with my lady Sibyl at Madame Boutineau's this evening."
But Sir Harry did not dance at Madame Boutineau's that evening, for when
at nightfall he returned to his quarters, he was met by the disastrous
tidings that the long-looked for, eagerly expected British brig, loaded
with supplies for the King's army, had been captured off Lechmere's
Point by the Yankee rebels.
It was not many months after this capture that the British evacuated
Boston. When Sir Harry Willing took leave of Sibyl Merridew, he pleaded
for some token of remembrance.
"You will not promise yourself to me," he said in reproachful accents,
"but give me some token of yourself, some gage of amity at least."
"But what--what can I give you, Sir Harry?" asked Sibyl, not a little
touched and troubled.
"Give me the little slipper you wore that night we danced together at
the Province House."
"That--that slipper?" and Sibyl blushed and paled.
"Yes--ah, you will, you will."
A moment's hesitation; then with a strange smile, half grave, half gay,
Sibyl answered, "I will."
A LITTLE BOARDING-SCHOOL SAMARITAN.
CHAPTER I.
It was Saturday afternoon, and Eva Nelson and Alice King were sitting in
their little study parlor at the Hill House Seminary poring over their
lesson chapter for the next day. It was the tenth chapter of St. Luke,
with the story of the good Samaritan. At last Eva flung herself back and
exclaimed, "We _can't_ be good as they were in those Bible days, no
matter _what_ anybody says; things are different."
"Of course they are," responded Alice. "Who said they weren't?"
Eva turned to the volume before her, and read aloud about the man who
had fallen among thieves, and the good Samaritan who came along and
bound up his wounds and took care of him.
"Now how can we do things like that?" she said.
"Oh, Eva, I should think you were about five or six years old instead of
a girl of thirteen. Nobody means that you are to do just those
particular things. What they do mean now is that you are to be good to
people who are in trouble,--people who need things done for them."
"Well, I'd be good to them if I had a chance; but what chance do I have
now with all my lessons? When I grow up, I shall belong to charitable
societies, as mamma does, and give things to poor folks, and go to see
them. I can't now; girls of our age can't, of course."
"We can do some things in vacations,--get up fairs and things of that
kind, and give the money to the poor."
"Oh, I've done that. I helped in a fair last summer, and we gave the
money to the children's hospital. But Miss Vincent said last week that
all of us could find ways of doing good every day if we would keep our
eyes and ears and hearts open; and I've felt ever since that she was
keeping her eyes open on the watch for something she expected _me_ to
do."
"Nonsense! She knows as well as we do that we haven't time to do any
more now. She means when we grow older. But look at the clock,--five
minutes to supper-time, and I've got to 'do' my hair all over, the braid
is so frowzely."
"What makes you braid it? Why don't you let it hang in a curl, as you
used to?"
"I told you why yesterday,--because that Burr girl has made me sick of
curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd
make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came
out with that fiery thing of hers. _Isn't_ it horrid?"
"Yes, horrid!"
A few minutes after, as Eva and Alice were stirring their cocoa at the
supper-table, the girl they had been criticising came hastily into the
dining-room and took her place. She was a tall girl for her age, with a
heavy ungainly figure, a swarthy skin, and black hair which was tied
back in a long curl. She wore a dark plaid skirt, with a blouse of fiery
red cashmere, and a hair ribbon of a deep violet shade. Nothing could
have been more ill-matched or more unbecoming. The girl who sat beside
her, pretty Janey Miller, was a great contrast, with her blond curls,
her rosy cheeks, and simple well-fitting dress of blue serge. Her every
movement, too, was as full of grace as Cordelia Burr's was exactly the
reverse. Everything seemed to go well with Janey; everything seemed to
go ill with Cordelia. She spilled her cocoa, she dropped her knife, she
crumbled her gingerbread, and she clattered her cup and saucer.
Certainly she was not a very pleasant person to sit near. But Janey
tried to conceal her annoyance, and succeeded very well, until at the
end of the meal Cordelia, in her headlong haste in leaving her seat,
tipped over a glass of water upon her neighbor's pretty blue dress. This
was too much, for Janey, and it was little wonder that she jumped up
with an impatient exclamation, nor that she declared to Eva and Alice a
little later that Cordelia ought to be ashamed of herself for being so
careless, and that she did wish she didn't have to sit next to her.
"I suppose, though, I shall have to sit there until the end of this
term; but there's _one_ thing I'm not going to do any more,--I'm not
going to dance with her. She doesn't keep step, and she _does_ dress
so!" concluded Janey.
"Yes, she does dress dreadfully; and to think it's her own fault. She
chooses her things herself," said Eva.
"No!" exclaimed Janey.
"Yes, she does; her mother is 'way off somewhere, and Cordelia gets what
she likes."
"And she doesn't know any better than to like such horrid things!
Sometimes she looks as if she'd lived with wild Indians!"
"That's it; that's it, I forgot!" shouted Eva. "She _has_ lived 'way off
out in a Territory on an Indian reservation. Her father is an army
officer of some kind."
"Young ladies, young ladies, look at your clocks!" suddenly called a
voice outside the door.
"Why, goodness, it's bedtime!" whispered Janey. "Good-night,
good-night."
The next afternoon, when the Sunday classes were in session in the great
hall, Janey, who was not in the same class with Eva and Alice, wondered
as she looked across at them what they could be talking about that
seemed so interesting. This is what they were talking about: Alice, in
her clever exact way, had told Miss Vincent the whole of that little
Saturday-night talk concerning the good Samaritan. Miss Vincent smiled
when Alice told of Eva's odd simplicity of application; but as Alice
went on and presented Eva's perplexity and her plea for girls of her
age,--their lack of time and all that, and her own assurance to Eva that
Miss Vincent did not mean what Eva fancied that she did,--Miss Vincent,
in a quick, decided, almost eager way, started forward and cried,--
"Oh, but I did! I did mean it. Girls of your age can do--oh, so much!
You are thinking of only one way of doing,--helping the poor, visiting
people in need. I _don't_ think you can do much of that. I think that
_is_ mostly for older people; but you live in a little world of your
own,--a girls' world, where you can help or hurt one another every day
and hour by what you do or say. Oh, I know, I know, for I went through
such suffering once,--was so hurt when I might have been helped. But let
me tell you about it, and then you'll see what I mean. It was when I was
between twelve and thirteen. We had just come to Boston, and I was sent
to a strange school. I was very shy, but ashamed to show that I was. So
when the girls stared at me, as girls will, and giggled amongst
themselves about anything, I thought they were staring in an unfriendly
way and laughing at _me_, and I immediately straightened up and put on a
stiff and what I tried to make an indifferent manner. This only
prejudiced them against me, and the unfriendliness I had fancied became
very soon a reality, and I was snubbed or avoided in the most decided
way. I tried to bear this silently, to act as if I didn't care for a
while, but I became so lonely at length I thought I would try to
conciliate them. I dare say, however, my shy manner was still
misunderstood, for I was not encouraged to go on. What I suffered at
this time I have never forgotten. The girls were no worse than other
girls, but they had started out on a wrong track, and gradually the
whole flock of them, one led on by what another would say or do, were
down upon me. It was a sort of contagious excitement, and they didn't
stop to think it might be unjust or cruel. Things went on from bad to
worse, until at last I gave up trying to conciliate, and turned on them
like a little wild-cat. I forgot my timidity,--forgot everything but my
desire to be even with them, as I expressed it. But it wasn't an even
conflict,--thirty girls against one; and at length I did something
dreadful. I was going from the school-room to a recitation room with my
ink-bottle; that I had been to have filled, when I met in the hall three
of 'my enemies,' as I called them. In trying to avoid them I ran against
them. They thought I did it purposely, and at once accused me of that,
and other sins I happened to be innocent of, in a way that exasperated
me. I tried to go on, but they barred my progress; and then it was that
I lost all control of myself, and in a sort of frantic fury flung the
ink-bottle that I held straight before me. I could never recall the
details of anything after that. I only remember the screams, the opening
of doors, the teachers hastening up, a voice saying, 'No; only the
dresses are injured; but she might have killed somebody!' In the answers
to their questions the teachers got at something of the truth, not all
of it. They were very much shocked at a state of things they had not
even suspected; but my violence prejudiced them against me, as was
natural, and they had little sympathy for me. Of course I couldn't
remain at the school after that. I was not expelled. My father took me
away, yet I always felt that I went in disgrace."
"They were horrid girls,--horrid!" cried Alice, vehemently.
"No; they were like any ordinary girls who _don't think_. But you see
how different everything might have been if only _one_ of them had
thought to say a kind word to me; had seen that I might have been
suffering, and"--smiling down upon Eva--"been a good Samaritan to me."
"They were horrid, or they _would_ have thought," insisted Alice. "I'm
sure _I_ don't know any girls who would have been so stupid."
"Nor I, nor I," chimed in two or three other voices. But Eva Nelson was
silent.
CHAPTER II.
"You are the most ridiculous girl for getting fancies into your head,
Eva; and you never get things right,--never!"
"I think you are very unkind."
"Well, you can think so. _I_ think--"
"Hush!" in a warning voice; "there's some one knocking at the door;"
then, louder, "Come in;" and responsive to this invitation, Janey Miller
entered.
"What were you and Eva squabbling about?" she asked, looking at Alice.
"Cordelia Burr!" replied Alice, disdainfully.
"Cordelia Burr?"
"Yes. What do you think? Eva wants to take her up and be intimate with
her."
"Now, Alice, I don't," cried Eva. "I only wanted to be kinder to her.
When Miss Vincent told us that story yesterday, I couldn't help thinking
of Cordelia, and that we might be on the wrong track with _her_, as
those horrid girls were with Miss Vincent."
"'Those horrid girls'! What does she mean, Alice?" asked Janey.
Alice repeated Miss Vincent's story. "And Eva," she went on, "has got it
into her head that Cordelia is like what Miss Vincent was, and that we
are like those horrid girls."
"Not like them; not as bad as they were, _yet_; but we might be if we
kept on, maybe."
"But it isn't the same thing at all, Eva," struck in Janey. "That sweet,
pretty Miss Vincent could never have been anything like Cordelia; and
we--I'm sure none of us have been like those horrid girls. I don't like
Cordelia, but I don't say anything hateful to her, and none of us girls
do."
"But you--we don't want her 'round with us, and we show it. We won't
dance with her if we can help it, and we've managed to keep her out of
things that we were in, a good many times."
"Well, nobody wants a person 'round with them who makes herself so
disagreeable as Cordelia does; and as for dancing with her, she's never
in step, and is always treading upon you and bumping against you; and in
everything else it's just the same."
"Maybe she's shy, as Miss Vincent was."
"Shy! Cordelia Burr shy!" shouted Alice, in derision.
"No; she's anything but shy," said Janey; "she's as uppish and
independent as she can be."
"But maybe she puts that on. Maybe--"
"Maybe she's a princess in disguise!" cried Alice, scornfully.
"Well, I don't care. I think we ought to try and see if perhaps we are
not on the wrong track with her; and I--"
"Now, Eva," and Alice looked up very determinedly, "if you begin to take
notice of Cordelia, there'll be no getting away from her; she'll be
pushing herself in where she isn't wanted, constantly. And there's just
one thing more: I'll say, if you _do_ begin this, you'll have to do it
alone. I won't have anything to do with it; and, you'll see, the rest of
the girls won't; and you'll be left to yourself with Miss Cordelia, and
a nice time you'll have of it."
Eva made no answer. Indeed, she would have found it hard to speak, for
she was choking with tears,--tears that presently found vent in "a good
cry," as Alice and Janey left the room.
What should she do? What _could_ she do with all the girls against her?
If she could only tell Miss Vincent, she could advise her. But Miss
Vincent had been summoned home by illness that very morning.
Poor Eva! the way before her looked extremely difficult. She was very
sensitive, and Miss Vincent's story had made an impression upon her that
could not be got rid of. She was astonished to find it had not made the
same impression upon Alice,--that Alice had not seen in it, as she had,
a clear direction what to do, or what to try to do; and now here was
Janey, as entirely out of sympathy, and Alice had said that all the rest
of the girls would be the same. If Alice was right, it might--it might
make a bad matter worse; it might make the girls dislike Cordelia more,
to--to interfere. For a moment Eva felt that this view of the matter
would solve her difficulty, by exonerating her from undertaking her
task. The next moment there flashed into her mind these words of Miss
Vincent's: "If only one of them had thought to say a kind word to me."
About half an hour later Alice and Janey, with three or four of the
other girls, were practising in the gymnasium together.
"I wonder where Eva is?" whispered Alice. "She's always here at this
time; she is so fond of the gym."
"She didn't like what we said, so perhaps she won't come to-day,"
whispered Janey.
"Well, I had to say what I did; if I hadn't, Eva would have--But there
she is now," as the door opened. Then aloud, "Eva, Eva, come over here
and try the bars with us."
Eva 's heart gave a little jump of gladness as she accepted this
pleasantly spoken invitation. She hated to be on ill terms with anybody,
and especially with Alice, of whom she was fond; and as she went forward
and swung herself lightly up beside her, she forgot for the moment
everything that was unpleasant.
There was a pretty little running exercise up and down a gently inclined
plane that was in great favor at the school; and when the three swung
down from the bars, Alice proposed that they should try the race-track,
as they called it.
They were just starting off when the door opened, and Cordelia Burr came
in. She stared about her in her odd frowning way, and then hurried
forward to join the runners. Eva gave a little start of recoil. Alice
gave more than a start. She seized Eva and Janey by the wrists, and,
pushing them before her, sent a nod and backward to several others who
had left the bars to come over to the race-track. She did not say even
to herself that she meant to crowd Cordelia out; but the fact was
accomplished, nevertheless, for by the time Cordelia reached the track
there was no room for her. Eva had seen this same kind of stratagem
enacted before, and thought it "fun." Now, with her eyes and ears and
heart open, through Miss Vincent's influence, the fun took on a
different aspect. But what--what ought she to do? What _could_ she do
then? She might slip out and offer her place to Cordelia. But the girls,
and Alice--Alice specially--would be _so_ angry. Oh, no, no, she
couldn't; it wouldn't do to brave them like that! Looking up as she came
to this conclusion, she saw Cordelia standing all alone, her face
flushed with anger or mortification, perhaps both.
"If only one of them had thought to say a kind word to me!" flashed
again through Eva's mind.
"Go on, go on; what are you lagging for?" whispered Alice, as Eva's pace
faltered here.
Eva's eyes were fixed upon Cordelia, who had crossed the room and was
going towards the door.
"Go on, go on; you are stopping us all!" exclaimed Alice, impatiently.
But with a sudden supreme effort Eva flung away her cowardice, and
dashed off the track, crying, "Cordelia! Cordelia!"
Cordelia turned her head a moment, yet without staying her steps.
Eva sprang forward and put out her hand, crying again, "Cordelia!
Cordelia!"
The runners had all stopped with one accord, as Eva sprang forward. What
was it, what was she going to do, to say, to Cordelia? Even Alice and
Janey, who knew more than the others what was in Eva's mind,--even they
wondered what she was going to do, to say. And when in the next instant
she cried breathlessly, "We--I--didn't mean to crowd you out; it--it
wasn't fair; and--and you'll come back and take my place, Cordelia,
won't you?" they, even Alice and Janey, forgot to be angry; forgot
everything at the moment in their astonishment and an involuntary
admiration for Eva's courage in daring to do as she did--_against them
all_! What Alice might have said or done when that moment had gone, and
her mortification at Eva's disregard of her opinion had had chance to
start afresh, it is impossible to tell, for before that could take
place something very unexpected happened, and this was a most
unlooked-for action on Cordelia's part. They all looked to see her turn
with one of her haughty, or what Alice and Janey called her uppish,
independent glances upon Eva, and reject at once her appeal and offer.
Instead of that--instead of coldness and haughty independence--they saw
her, they heard her, suddenly give a shuddering, sobbing sigh, and then,
dropping her face into her hands, break down utterly in a paroxysm of
tears,--not tears of anger, of violence of any kind, but tears that,
like the shuddering, sobbing sigh, seemed to come from a sore heart
after long repression.
"Oh, Cordelia! Cordelia!" burst out Eva, putting her arm about Cordelia,
"don't, don't cry."
Cordelia could not respond to this appeal, could not stop her tears; but
as Eva bent over her in tender pity, she leaned forward and rested her
head against the arm that encircled her. As the girls who stood watching
saw this, as they saw Eva with her own pocket-handkerchief try to wipe
away those tears, as they heard her say again, "Oh, Cordelia! Cordelia!
don't, don't cry!" they looked at one another in a confused, questioning
sort of way; and then, as they heard Eva speak again and with a breaking
voice, as they saw the bright drops of sympathy and pity and regret
gather in her eyes and roll down her cheeks, they started uneasily, and
one and then another moved forward in a half-frightened, embarrassed
fashion towards the door. Eva glanced up at them reproachfully as they
passed. Were they not going to say a word, not a single word, to
Cordelia? Hadn't they any pity for her; hadn't they any shame for what
they had done? Goaded by these thoughts, she burst out passionately,
"Oh, girls, I should think--" and then broke down completely, and bowed
her head against Cordelia's, unable to say another word. But somebody
else took up her words,--the very words she had used a second
ago,--somebody else whispered,--
"Don't cry, don't cry." At the same moment a hand touched her shoulder,
and she looked up to see--Alice King standing beside her. And then it
seemed as if all the others were anxious to press forward; and one of
them, the youngest of all, little Mary Leslie, a girl of ten, suddenly
piped out,--
"We--we didn't know as you'd care, like this, Cordelia."
And then Cordelia lifted up her swollen tear-stained face, and faltered
out: "Care? How--how could I hel--help caring?"
"But we thought--we thought you didn't like us," said another,
hesitatingly.
"And I--I thought you hated and despised me, and I thought you'd despise
me more if--if I showed that I cared!" and Cordelia gave another little
sob, and covered her poor disfigured face again.
"Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia!" cried one and then another, pityingly; and
then a voice, it sounded like Alice's, said, "We've been on the wrong
track."
Just here a bell in the hall--the signal to those in the gymnasium that
their half-hour was up--rang sharply out, and ashamed and sorry and
repentant the girls hurried away to their rooms to change their dresses
and prepare for dinner.
"Oh, Alice, Alice, you were so good!" cried Eva, flinging her arms
around Alice's neck the moment they were alone together.
"Good? Don't--don't say that," exclaimed Alice, starting back.
"But you _were_. I--I was so afraid you'd be angry with me. I--"
Alice now flung _her_ arms around her friend, and gave her a little hug,
as she cried: "Oh, Eva, it's you who've been good. I--I've been--a
little fiend, I suppose, and I _was_ horridly angry at first; but when
I--I saw how--that Cordelia really was--that she really felt what she
did, I--oh, Eva!" laughing a little hysterically, "when you stood
mopping up Cordelia's tears, all I could think was, _there's_ a little
Samaritan."
"Oh, Alice!"
"I did truly, and you'll go on as good as you've begun, and end by
liking and loving Cordelia because you pity her, I dare say. But though
I'm going to behave myself, and _bear_ with her, I shall never come up
to that, for she is so queer and so clumsy, and she _does_ dress so! I'm
going to behave myself, though, I am,--I am; but I hope she won't expect
too much, that she won't push forward too fast now."
"Oh, Alice, I don't believe Cordelia's that kind of a girl at all; she's
too proud. I think she's awkward and queer, and don't know about dress
and things, because she's lived 'way out there on the plains, but
she'll improve when she finds we mean to be friendly to her; you see if
she doesn't."
And Eva was right. By the end of the term Cordelia had improved so much
in the friendlier atmosphere that surrounded her that she was quite like
another girl. No longer uneasy and suspicious, she lost her
self-consciousness, and with it a good deal of her awkwardness and
apparent ill temper, and began to blossom out happily and cheerily as a
girl should. Even her face brightened and bloomed in this atmosphere,
and by and by she took Eva and Alice and Janey into her confidence so
far that she shyly asked their advice about her dress, and profited by
it to such an extent that Alice could no longer say, "She _does_ dress
so!"
ESTHER BODN.
CHAPTER I.
"Oh, Laura, I want you to come home with me to-morrow after school and
dine, and stay the evening. We shall be alone together, for mamma and
papa are going out to a dinner-party. You'll come, won't you? Mamma told
me to ask you."
"If it was any other evening."
"Now, Laura, you are not going to say you can't come!"
"I must, Kitty. I have promised to take tea with Esther Bodn."
"Esther Bodn!"
"Yes, she asked me to fix a day this week when I could come, and I
fixed Thursday,--to-morrow."
"But, Laura, can't you postpone it? Tell her how it is,--that mamma and
papa are going away, and that Mary and Agnes are in New York, and I
shall be all alone unless you come. Can't you do that, Laura?"
"I don't want to do that, Kitty."
"Oh, you'd rather go to that little Bodn girl's than to come to me!"
"I didn't say that, and I didn't mean that, Kitty. I meant that I didn't
want to do what you asked, because it wouldn't be polite or kind."
"Well, it seems to me, Laura Brooks, that you are putting on very
ceremonious airs all at once. Didn't you postpone until another day a
visit to Amy Stanton last winter, for just such a reason as this,--that
you might go to Annie Grainger's when her mother went to Baltimore,--and
Amy never thought of its being impolite or unkind."
"But that was different, Kitty."
"Different? Show me where the difference is, please."
"Oh, Kitty, you _know_."
"But I _don't_ know."
Laura's delicate face flushed a little, but after a moment's hesitation
she said: "Esther is--is not like Amy Stanton or you; that is, she
doesn't live in the same way. The Bodns are poor,--quite poor, Kitty."
"Well, I don't see how that alters the case," still obstinately
responded Kitty.
"Now, Kitty, you _do_ see. Esther is shy and sensitive. She doesn't
visit the people that we do."
"She doesn't visit _anybody_, so far as I know."
"Yes, that is just it," Laura went on eagerly; "and so you see that when
she and her mother have made preparations for company--even one
person--it would put them to a great deal of trouble and inconvenience
to change the time, and it would be unkind and impolite to ask them to
do it."
"How do you know that they have made such unusual preparations for you?"
asked Kitty, sarcastically.
Laura flushed again as she answered: "I didn't mean unusual in one way,
but I thought that they didn't often invite company by something that
Esther said. When she asked me to fix a day, she told me that her mother
wasn't very well, and that they didn't keep a servant."
"Not keep a servant! Not a single one! Why, they must be awfully poor,
like common working-people!" exclaimed the young Beacon Street girl, in
a wondering tone.
"Esther isn't common, if she is poor," Laura instantly asserted with
decision.
"I don't understand how anybody so poor as that should be sent to Miss
Milwood's school. I shouldn't think they could afford it," went on
Kitty; "why, the place for her is a public school."
"But, Kitty, don't you know that Esther assists Miss Milwood,--that it
is Esther who looks over all the French and German exercises, and makes
the first corrections before mademoiselle takes them?"
"Esther Bodn?"
"Yes,--why, Esther, you must have noticed, is very proficient in French
and German. She and her mother have lived abroad and here, in French and
German families, to prepare her for being a teacher. She has a great
natural aptitude, too, for languages."
"How in the world did you find all this out, Laura?"
"I didn't _find it out_, as you call it,--there is no secret about
it,--Esther would no doubt have told you as much, if you had got as well
acquainted with her as I have."
"I don't see how you came to get so well acquainted with her. She's nice
enough, but I could always see that she wasn't like the rest of us,--of
our set."
"Like the rest of us! She's just as good as the rest of us, and better
than some of us."
"Oh, I dare say," said Kitty, in a patronizing tone.
"She may not be of our set, as you say, Kitty; but when I think of how
Maud and Florence Aplin talk sometimes, I don't feel very proud of
belonging to 'our set.'"
"Yes, I know, Maud and Flo do brag awfully now and then; but they are
nice girls, and it is a nice family, mamma says."
"Every one seems to say that about them, and I've often wondered what
they meant. I'm sure Mr. Aplin isn't very nice. He has no end of money,
I know, but he can be so rude, and Mrs. Aplin is so patronizing. Now,
why should they be called such 'nice people'?"
Kitty straightened herself up, put on a very knowing look, and repeated
parrot-like what she had heard older persons say,--
"Mrs. Aplin was a Windlow."
"What in the world is a Windlow?" asked Laura, rather sarcastically.
Kitty was a worldly young woman, but she was also full of fun; and this
question of Laura's amused her mightily, and with a suppressed giggle
she answered demurely: "I think it has something to do with windows. The
Windlows were English, and I believe their business was to open and shut
the windows in the king's palaces,--perhaps to wash them. This all began
ages ago, and it was considered a great honor, a tip-top thing to do,
especially when the windows were high up. The honor has descended from
generation to generation, and the name with it, I believe. They had some
very ordinary name at the start."
The giggle, that had been suppressed up to this point, now burst forth
in a shout of laughter, wherein Laura herself joined, exclaiming, as she
did so, "Oh, Kitty, you are so ridiculous!"
"Why don't you make a rhyme and say, 'Oh, Kitty, you're so witty'? But,
Laura, it is you who are odd and ridiculous, to pretend that you don't
know that Windlow is one of the oldest names of one of the oldest
families who came over to America in the Mayflower,--regular old
aristocrats."
"Now, Kitty, I'm up in my history, if I'm not on this society stuff, and
just let me tell you that those first settlers of America who came over
in the Mayflower were _not_ aristocrats."
"Oh, Laura, when everybody who can, brags of a Mayflower ancestor! I
heard Mrs. Arkwright say to mamma, the other day that the Aplins were of
the real old Mayflower blue blood."
"Then Mrs. Arkwright, with the 'everybody' you tell of, doesn't know
what history says."
"Why, I'm sure I thought that was history."
"Well, it isn't. Last year I went with my father to Plymouth, and he
took me to the famous rock where the Mayflower pilgrims landed, and
afterward he gave me a lovely book called 'The Olden Time,' by Edmund
Sears, that told me all about the pilgrims,--who they were, and why they
came over, and everything, and I remember it said in this book that the
Plymouth pilgrims were constantly confounded--those were the very
words--with the Puritans who came over nine years later to
Massachusetts."
"But Plymouth is in Massachusetts."
"Yes, I know, but it wasn't in that day. It was simply Plymouth Colony.
The Mayflower sailed by Cape Cod into Plymouth Bay. They named the bay
Plymouth, as they named the town Plymouth, for the old Plymouth in
England."
"Did they name Cape Cod too?"
"No; that name was given years before by Captain Gosnold, an early
voyager."
"Oh, I know, he caught such a lot of codfish there. I wish he'd never
discovered the place; I hate codfish. But go on with your history
lesson, Miss Brooks. I haven't any Mayflower ancestors, and so I'm more
than resigned to have them taken down from their aristocratic peg."
"But they were lovely people,--lovely; kind and good to everybody,
whether they believed as they did or not, for they had been persecuted
themselves in the old country they had left for their opinions, and they
meant that every one in the new country should worship as they pleased.
They were very intelligent people, too, though, as this history says,
'from the middle and humbler walks of English life.' It was the men who
came over to Massachusetts Bay and settled in Boston who were the
aristocrats, and they were not nearly so liberal and generous as the
Plymouth men. The head ones were stiff and overbearing, and meddled and
interfered with people who didn't think as they did, and made a lot of
strict little laws about all sorts of things, so that the name of
'Puritan' and 'puritanical' came to be used for anything that was
bigoted and narrow-minded; and these names have stuck to all New
England, and papa says that at this day people mix up things, and think
that the Mayflower people and Boston people were all alike."
Kitty Grant gave a little hop, skip, and jump here, to Laura's
astonishment. "Oh, Laura, it's such larks," she cried out. The two girls
were walking down Beacon Street on their way home from school, and Laura
looked about her to see what Kitty had so suddenly discovered to call
out such an exclamation. Seeing nothing unusual, she asked, "_What_ is
such larks?"
Kitty laughed. "Oh, Laura, can't you see that this little fact you have
pulled out from this tangled-up colony business, this dear dreadful
little fact that the Mayflowers were not aristocrats, only--what does
your history book say? Oh, I have it--'from the middle and humbler walks
of English life;' not blue Mayflowers, but common colors--can't you see
that it will be such larks for me to use this little fact like a little
bombshell, when Mrs. Arkwright, or Maud, or Flo Aplin, or any of these
Mayflower braggers begin to hold forth?"
"Why, Kitty, I thought you liked Maud and Flo!"
"I do when they don't give me too much Mayflower. I've always thought,
and so has mamma, that this was their one fault,--that if it wasn't for
that, they would be pretty near perfect; and now--and now, Brooksie, I
shall proceed to be the means of grace that shall make them paragons of
perfection. Oh, Laura, you're a treasure with that head of yours crammed
full of facts, and I'll forgive you anything for this last little fact,
even for neglecting me for that little Bodn girl!"
"I haven't neglected you."
"Well, snubbed me, then."
"Nor snubbed you. I only want to be considerate and polite to Esther;
that's all."
"What a horrid name she has! Did you ever think of it, Laura--Esther
Bodn--Bodn?"
"I don't think it's horrid at all. I like it."
"B-o-d-n--Bodn--it sounds awfully common."
"Why, Kitty, it's spelled B-o-w-d-o-i-n, the same as our Bowdoin Street,
and pronounced Bod'n, as that is!"
"Is it, really? I didn't know that."
"I'm sure Bowdoin Street sounds well enough."
"Well, yes, I've always rather liked the sound of it; but then, you
know, I always _saw_ and _felt_ the spelling, when I saw it. What in the
world was the pronunciation ever snipped off like that for? It ought to
be pronounced just as it is spelled. I've a good mind to pronounce it so
the next time I speak to Esther."
"No, I wouldn't do that; but you might _think_ of her as Miss Bowdoin,"
answered Laura, dryly.
"Oh, Laura, what a head full of wisdom you've got! I don't see how I
ever lived without you. But--see here, tell me what street Miss Bowdoin
lives in."
Laura hesitated a moment; then answered, "McVane Street."
"Where is McVane Street, for pity's sake? I never heard of it,--one of
those horrid South End streets, I suppose?"
"No, it is at the West End, beyond Cambridge Street, down by the
Massachusetts Hospital."
"No, no, Laura Brooks, you _don't_ mean that she lives down there by the
wharves?"
"It isn't by the wharves," cried Laura, indignantly.
"Well, it isn't far off. One of the regular old tumble-down streets,
given up long ago to cobblers and tinkers of all kinds, and you're going
to take tea with a girl who lives in that frowsy, dirty place!"
"It isn't frowsy and dirty. It's only an old, unfashionable street, but
not frowsy or dirty. It's quite clean and quiet, and has shade-trees and
little grass plots to some of the houses. Why, it used to be the court
end of the town years ago."
"So was North Bennet Street, and all the rest of the North End; and now
it's turned over to the rag-tag of creation,--Russian Jews, and every
other kind of a foreigner,--and look here!" suddenly interrupting
herself, as a new idea struck her, "I'll bet you anything that this
Esther Bodn is a foreigner,--an emigrant herself of some sort."
"Kitty!"
"Yes, I'll bet you a pair of gloves,--eight-buttoned ones,--and I don't
believe her name is spelled at all like our Bowdoin Street. I believe
they--her mother and she--spell it that way _to suit themselves_. I
believe it's just Bodn; and that is an outlandish foreign name, if I--"
"Kitty, I think it's positively wicked for you to talk like this,--it's
slander."
Kitty laughed, and, wagging her head to and fro, sang in a merry little
undertone,--
"Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief
Flaunting as a Yankee man; that's my belief."
Laura couldn't help joining in this laugh, Kitty was so droll; but the
laugh died out in the next breath, as she said,--
"Now, Kitty, don't go and talk like this to the other girls; don't--"
"Laura, how _did_ it ever come about that the Bodn invited you to tea?"
interrupted Kitty.
"It came about as naturally as this: One day I was going along Boylston
Street, and just as I got to the public library I met Esther coming out
with her arms full of books. I joined her, and insisted upon carrying
some of the books for her; and after a little hesitation she accepted my
offer, and led the way across the Common to the opposite gateway upon
Charles Street. Here she stopped, and held out one hand for the books,
and said, 'It was so kind of you to help me. Thank you very much.'
"'But I'm not going to leave you here,' I said; 'I'll walk home with
you.' 'But it's a long walk to where I live,' she answered. I told her I
didn't think anything of a long walk, and insisted on going further with
her. I felt sorry, however, a minute after, for I saw that I had made a
mistake,--that she didn't want me to go with her; but I didn't know how
to turn back at once then, as she had started up briskly at my
insistence with another 'Thank you.' But when we turned into Cambridge
Street, I began to understand why she didn't want me,--she felt
sensitive and afraid of my criticism; and I don't wonder--"
"Nor I, either," struck in Kitty, in a flippant tone.
"I should have felt sensitive," went on Laura, pityingly, "and I was so
sorry for her; but I was determined to keep on then, and seem to take
no notice, and somehow make her understand that it made no difference to
me where she lived. I felt sorrier and sorrier for her, though, as she
went on down Cambridge Street, past all those liquor and provision and
second-hand furniture shops, with the tenements over them, and I was so
thankful for her when she turned out of all this, and we crossed over
and went into a quiet old street, and came out upon the pretty grounds
of the Massachusetts Hospital; and as soon as I saw these grounds, I
said, 'Oh, how pretty!' and then we turned again, and it was into the
street opposite the hospital. It was almost as quiet as the country
there. There were no shops at all, and the houses, though they looked
old, were in very good repair, and some of them had been freshly
painted, and had little grass plots beside them; and it was before one
of these that Esther stopped, and then she said, 'If we had come over
the hill, the way would have been pleasanter,' and I said just what I
felt,--that I thought it was very pleasant, anyway, when you got there,
and that the sunset must be beautiful from the windows. She was taking
the books from me as I said this, and she looked up at me for a second,
as if she were studying me, and then she asked me if I would like to
come in some bright day, and see her and the sunsets,--that they were
very beautiful from the upper windows. I told her I would like to come
very much, and thanked her for asking me; and then I kissed her, for--"
"And struck up an intimate friendship at once," burst in Kitty,
laughing.
"No, for this was some weeks ago, and she's only just asked me to set
the day when I could come. Oh, Kitty, you may make fun all you like; but
she is a very interesting girl,--my mother thinks she is too."
"Oh, you've introduced her to your mother, have you?"
"I have told mamma about her, and I brought her in one afternoon to see
the pictures,--she's very fond of pictures,--and mamma asked her to stay
to luncheon, but she couldn't."
"And now it is you who are going to make the first visit, going to
sunsets and tea on McVane Street!"
"Laura! Laura!" called a voice here; and Laura looked up, to see her
brother Jack in his T-cart pulling up at the curbstone. The next minute
she was whirling off with him, bowing good-by to Kitty; and Kitty was
calling after her mischievously,--
"Laura, Laura, tell your brother you are going to take tea with a girl
who lives on McVane Street!"
CHAPTER II.
The spirited horse that young Jack Brooks drove held his attention so
completely at that moment that he had no time to bestow upon anything
else; but when he was well out on the broad, clear roadway of the
"Neck," he turned to his sister, and asked, "What did Kitty Grant; mean
by your going to take tea with a girl who lives on McVane Street?"
"It is one of the girls at Miss Milwood's school,--Esther Bodn."
"How does a girl who lives on McVane Street come to go to Miss Milwood's
school?"
"She assists Miss Milwood." And Laura told what she knew of Esther's
assistance in the way of the French and German.
"Oh!" and the young man gave a satisfied sort of nod as he uttered this,
as much as to say, "That explains it;" and then, dismissing the subject
from his mind, turned his whole attention again to his horse, while
Laura drew a deep breath of relief. She had begun to think that if her
brother were to take up Kitty's cry against McVane Street, she might
find her anticipated visit set about with thorns. "But I shall go, I
shall go!" she said to herself, "whatever Jack may say, when mamma says
that I may."
But Jack said no more on that occasion, nor when his mother, the next
day at luncheon, asked Laura what time Miss Bodn expected her, did the
young gentleman make any remark. He had evidently forgotten the matter
altogether; and Laura, without further anxiety, set out upon her little
journey to McVane Street.
Kitty Grant had laughed that morning when Laura had told her that she
was to go to Esther's at four o'clock and leave at six, that she might
be in time for her own dinner hour,--had laughed and said, "Oh, a
regular 'four-to-six,'--a sunset tea! The little Bodn is 'up' on
'sassiety' matters, isn't she? Dear me, I wish _I_ could go with you,--I
never went to a sunset tea. Couldn't you take me along?"
"No, I'm sure I couldn't," Laura had answered, laughing a little, but a
little irritated, nevertheless, at Kitty's tone; and when Kitty had gone
on and declared that nobody could be more appreciative than herself,
Laura had retorted,--
"Yes; but you make great mistakes in your appreciations. You wouldn't
appreciate Esther's own sweetness and refinement at their real worth, if
the carpets and curtains and chairs and things in the house on McVane
Street didn't happen to please your taste."
These words of hers returned to Laura with great force as the door of
the house on McVane Street was opened to her, and she found herself in a
chilly hall, darkly papered and darkly and shabbily carpeted; and when
she followed Esther up the stairs,--for it was Esther who had answered
her ring,--and noted the general dreariness of the whole, she thought
pityingly, "Poor Esther, to be obliged to live in such a dismal
fashion."
It was in this depressed state of mind that she came to the top of the
stairs. Here Esther was waiting for her; and as she pushed wide open a
door in front of her, she said brightly, "Here we are," and Laura,
turning, stood for a moment dumb with surprise, as she saw a room that
by contrast with the dinginess of the halls looked almost luxurious, for
it was all lightness and brightness and warmth and sweet odors, with
the sunshine streaming in upon a window full of plants, and touching up
a quantity of woodcuts, photographs, and water-colors, with a few oils,
and two or three fine etchings,--all of which pretty nearly hid the ugly
dark wallpaper. A little coal fire in a low grate made things still
brighter, and brought out the soft faded reds of the rug, and purples
and yellows of the worn chintz covers of lounge and chairs. And right in
the lightest and brightest spot of all this lightness and brightness
stood a little claw-footed round table, bearing an old-fashioned
tea-service of china. The sunshine seemed actually to fill up the cups
and spill over into the gilt-bordered saucers, as Laura looked. "It is a
'sunset tea,' indeed," she said to herself; "and if Kitty Grant could
see how pretty and refined were the simple arrangements, she wouldn't
mix Esther up with any horrid common emigrants, if she _does_ live on
McVane Street. Esther a foreigner of any kind! Nothing could be more
absurd. Esther was a New England girl, if ever there was one,--a little
New England girl, who had come up with her mother to Boston from the
Cape perhaps to learn to be a teacher. Yes, that must be the explanation
of McVane Street. The Bodns were people who had come up from the
country, and country people of small means wouldn't be likely to know
where to choose a home."
Laura had all this settled satisfactorily in her mind after she had
chatted awhile with Esther in the sunny room, and taken in more
completely its various details, such as the fishnet drapery by the
windows, the group of shells on the plant-stand, and several photographs
of a sea-coast. And when shown other sea-country treasures,--bits of
coral and ivory and mosses,--things grew plainer than ever, and she
began to have a very clear notion of Esther's past surroundings, and
pictured her mother as one of those neat, trim, anxious-faced little
women she had often seen in her sea or mountain summerings. It was just
when she had got this fancy picture sharply defined that she heard
Esther say, as a door leading from the next room opened,--
[Illustration: A tall, handsome woman smiled a greeting]
"Mother dear, this is my friend Laura Brooks, I've told you about;" and
Laura, rising hastily, turned to see no trim, anxious-faced little
person, but a tall, handsome, dark-eyed woman smiling a greeting to her
daughter's guest over the pot of tea and plate of bread and butter that
she carried. Not in the least like the fancy picture; but who--who was
it she suggested?
All through the little meal this question kept recurring to Laura. Where
_had_ she seen that dark, handsome face before? It recurred to her
again, as she followed the mother and daughter up to the little
third-story room, to see the beautiful sunset effects. Where _had_ she
seen just that profile against such a sunset light? Then all at once, as
the declining beams sent a redder ray across the nose and chin, the
question was answered. The red ray had also illumined Laura's own face,
and Mrs. Bodn, turning suddenly, caught the girl's curiously animated
expression, and asked inquiringly, "What is it, my dear?" and Laura
answered eagerly,--
"Oh, do you know that picture of Walter Scott's 'Rebecca,' painted by
some great English artist, I think? My uncle has a copy of it in his
library, and it is so like you, _so_ like you, Mrs. Bodn. The moment I
saw you I was sure that I had met you before; but just now, when the
sunset lit up your face, I knew at once what made it so familiar. It was
its great resemblance to the 'Rebecca.' Oh, _do_ you know the picture,
Mrs. Bodn?"
"Yes, perfectly well," answered Mrs. Bodn, quietly; "but it was not
painted by an English artist, it was the work of a young German who is
now dead. He was very little known, though he did some fine work."
"And did you know that the picture was so like you, Mrs. Bodn?"
"Well, yes, I knew that it was thought to be like me when it was
painted; and it ought to be, you know, for I sat for it,--I was the
model."
"You were a--a--the model," gasped Laura, in astonishment.
"Yes, I was a--a--the model," answered Mrs. Bodn, repeating Laura's own
halting syllables, with an accent half of amusement, half of sarcasm.
Then, more seriously, she added, "It was years ago, when I was living in
Munich."
"Esther, where are you?" a voice from the floor below here called out.
"We are up in your room looking at the sunset; it's lovely; come up and
see it," Esther called back. And the next moment Laura was being
introduced to "My cousin, David Wybern,"--a tall, good-looking boy of
fifteen or sixteen, with beautiful dark eyes like Mrs. Bodn's. The next
moment after that, when this tall, good-looking boy, in addressing Mrs.
Bodn, called her "Aunt Rebecca," like a flash these thoughts went flying
through Laura's mind,--
"A model for Rebecca the Jewess, and her own name Rebecca, and her
daughter's and her nephew's names,--Esther, David,--these also Hebrew
names!" What did it signify? Kitty--Kitty would say that it proved _she_
was right,--that they _were_ the very people she had said they were.
But, oh, they were not; they were not of that common kind that Kitty had
classed so scornfully! No matter if her mother _had_ been a model years
ago, it was through poverty, of course, and she was very brave not to be
ashamed of it; and Esther,--Esther was lovely, a girl to be good to, to
be true to, and she, Laura Brooks, would be good to her and true to her,
no matter what happened. Poor Laura, she little knew how this resolve
would be put to the test within the next few hours, for she could not
foresee that the fact of the coachman's forgetfulness to call for her,
as he had been ordered to do, and her consequent acceptance of David
Wybern's attendance, was to bring such a storm about her. It had seemed
the simplest thing in the world, when half-past six struck, and no
carriage came for her, to accept David's attendance, and just as simple,
when the street cars rushed by, without an inch of standing-room, to
walk on and up over the hill to Beacon Street. But in this walk it
happened that her brother had passed her as he drove by with one of his
friends, and he had gone straight home and into the dining-room with the
words, "What does this mean?" and then he proceeded to tell how he had
passed his sister accompanied by a young man or boy who looked to him
like one of the clerks in Weyman & Co.'s importing-house.
What did it mean, indeed? Her father and mother also wondered and
exclaimed; and when Laura appeared, and told them what it meant, there
was a general outcry of disapproval and criticism, led on by her
brother, who told her she should have waited and sent a message to them
by this boy, instead of permitting him to walk home with her. In vain
Laura spoke of the boy's good manners, of the refined aspect of the
little home which she had just visited, and the intelligence and dignity
of Mrs. Bodn and her daughter. Nothing she said seemed to ameliorate the
disapproval or criticism; and at last, stung by a sore sense of
injustice, the girl turned upon her father and said, "Papa, I've always
heard you say that everybody should be judged by their worth, and you've
often and often quoted from that poem of Robert Burns that you are so
fond of, about honest poverty, and I remember two lines particularly,
that you seemed to like most of all,--
"'That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the prize and a' that;'
"and yet now, now--"
"But, my dear child," as Laura here broke down with a little sob,--"my
dear child, it isn't that these people are poor,--it is because we don't
know anything about them."
"I--I think it is because you _do_ know that--that they live on McVane
Street," faltered Laura.
"Well, that _is_ to know nothing about them, in the sense that father
means," broke in her brother, sharply. "Their living there shows that
they are the kind of people that are out of our class entirely,--people
that we don't _want_ to know. I didn't think it mattered much the other
day, when you told me you were going down there to take tea with your
teacher; but when I find you are to make friends with the young clerks
who are the relations of your teacher, I think it matters a good deal."
"But this clerk, as you call him, has a great deal better manners than
Charley Aplin. He behaves a great deal more like a gentleman."
"And he has a much longer nose," retorted her brother, with a sneering
little laugh. "The fellow's a Jew, I'm certain; he has a regular Jewish
face."
"He has _not_," began Laura, indignantly, and then stopped suddenly. It
was the low trader-type of Jewish face reflected from her brother's mind
that she saw as she spoke; then Mrs. Bodn's beautiful profile and that
of her nephew rose before her! If they--if they--her brother, her
father, could see these faces,--these faces so fine and intelligent, and
saw, too, the likeness that she had seen to the portrait in her uncle's
library,--would they feel differently,--would they do justice to Esther
and her relations, though they _were_ Jews,--would they admit that they
were of the higher type, that they were fit friends for her? No, no, no,
she answered herself, as soon as these questions started up in her mind,
and, stung through all her generous young heart by these instinctive
answers, she burst forth: "You talk about Jews as if there were but one
class,--the lowest class. What if all Americans were judged by the
lowest class? Would you call that fair? And you think the Bodns are the
lowest kind just because they are poor and live on McVane Street! That
great novelist who lived in England and who was prime minister there,
Lord Beaconsfield, was a Jew, and he was proud of it; and the
Mendelssohns were Jews; and there are those wonderful musical novels
Uncle George gave me to read last summer, 'Charles Auchester' and
'Counterparts,' they are full of Jews and their genius--"
"Laura, Laura, there is no need of your talking like this," interrupted
her father; "we are not going to deny the worth or respectability of
your new acquaintances, but it is entirely unnecessary for you to rush
into any intimacy with such strangers."
There was a look in her father's face, as he spoke, that told Laura very
plainly that all she had said had done more harm than good, and that
henceforth there would be no more "sunset teas" with Esther Bodn. All
her little plans, too, for making Esther's life brighter, by welcoming
her into her own home, and bringing her into a better acquaintance with
the other girls, were rendered impossible now. But if she could not be
good to her in this way, she would be more than ever kind and cordial to
her at school, and she would try to enlist Kitty Grant's interest. She
would tell Kitty about that pretty refined home, and ask her to be kind
and cordial too; and she was sure that Kitty would not refuse, for, in
spite of her fun and her worldliness, Kitty had really a kind heart.
Yes, she would enlist Kitty, and Kitty was all powerful. If she once got
interested in a person, she could make everybody else interested. But,
alas, for this scheme!
CHAPTER III.
Alas! because Kitty had already taken her stand on the other side. She
had already told the girls that Esther Bodn lived on McVane Street, in
near neighborhood to a lot of rum-shops and foreigners, and had then
"made fun," in the same rattling way that she had used with Laura,
airing all her little suspicions and suggestions about the name of Bodn,
in the half-frolic fashion that always had such effect upon the
listeners. It had such effect on this occasion, that Laura found that
every girl had passed from indifference to an active prejudice against
Esther. Kitty herself had not meant to produce this result. Indeed,
Kitty had had no meaning whatever but that of amusing herself,--"making
fun;" and when the girls, relishing this "fun," laughed and applauded,
she did not realize that she had done a mischievous thing. Poor Laura,
however, realized everything as the days went by, and she saw Esther
subjected to a certain critical observation. Her only hope was that the
person most interested did not notice this; but one day she came upon
Esther at recess, bending over a pile of exercises, at which she was
apparently hard at work.
"What's the rush, Esther, that you've got to work at recess?" she asked.
Esther murmured an unintelligible reply, and bent her head still lower;
and then it was that Laura, to her dismay, saw a tear drop to the
exercises upon the desk.
"Esther, Esther, what is the matter? Tell me!"
"I--I don't know," faltered Esther, "but things seem different. I always
knew that the girls didn't care very much for me, but they were not
unkind. Now--they--seem unkind some way. Perhaps it's only my fancy,
but--but they seem to look down on me as they didn't before, and--and
sometimes they seem to avoid me, and--I'm just the same as ever,
except--except I'm a good deal shabbier this spring. I've always been
rather shabby, but this spring it's worse, because we've lost some
money,--not much, but it was a good deal to us, and I couldn't have
anything new; and--and there's another thing--one morning I overheard
one of the girls say to Kitty Grant, 'McVane Street, that is enough!'
They must have been talking about me and where I live. Nobody else here
lives on McVane Street, and we--mother and I--wouldn't live there if we
could afford to live where we liked; but we came here strangers, and
this was much the most comfortable place we could find for what we could
pay. I know it's in a disagreeable part of the city; but it _isn't_ bad,
it _isn't_ low, where we are, it's only run down and shabby. But I
thought Boston people were above judging others by such things. I'd
always heard that Boston girls--"
"Boston girls! oh, don't talk to me of Boston girls, don't talk to me of
any girls anywhere," burst in Laura. "I'm sick--sick of girls. Girls
will do things and say things--little, mean, petty things--that boys
would be ashamed to do or say."
"Then you _do_ think it's because of my shabbiness and where I live
that--that has made them--these girls so--so different; but why should
they--all at once? I can't understand."
"Don't try to understand! Don't bother your head about them--they don't
mean--they don't know--they are not worth your notice. You are a long,
long way above them!"
"Mother didn't want to come to Boston to live; but when my uncle John
Wybern, mother's brother, died three years ago,--he died in Munich; he
was an artist, like my father, and we'd all lived together, since my
father's death,--we came on here, as uncle had advised, because he knew
some one here in an importing-house who would get David a situation. He
didn't want David to be an artist. He said it was such an anxious,
hand-to-mouth life, if one didn't make a quick success of it; and _he
knew_, for _he_ hadn't made a success any more than my father
had,--and--and this is why we came here, and are here now on McVane
Street, though my mother didn't want to come. But _I_ wanted to come
from the first. I'd heard and read so much about Boston, I thought I was
sure to be happy here, for I thought the people were so noble and
high-minded, and--" There was a pathetic little faltering break again at
this, which was resolutely repressed, and the sentence resumed with,
"and then I knew my father's people had once--" But at this point,
"Esther," called out Miss Milwood from the doorway, "bring the exercises
into my room, and we'll finish them together."
Almost at that very moment Kitty Grant came running down the aisle,
calling out, "Laura, Laura, are you going this afternoon to the Art
Club?"
"To hear Monsieur Baudouin? Yes."
"Well, we'll go together, then."
"Very well."
"Very well," mimicking Laura's cool tones; then with a change of voice,
"Laura, what _is_ the matter? You are enough to freeze anybody. What
have I done?"
"You've done a very cruel thing."
"Laura!"
"Yes, I sha'n't take back my words,--you have done a very cruel thing."
"For pity's sake, what do you mean?"
"You may well say 'for _pity's_ sake;'" and then Laura burst forth and
repeated, word for word, the conversation that had transpired between
Esther and herself, concluding with, "And you--_you_, Kitty, are to
blame for this, for it is you who have prejudiced the girls against
Esther with your talk about McVane Street and the foreigners in that
neighborhood."
"I? Just my little fun about McVane Street and your sunset tea there?"
"Yes, just your little fun! I know what your fun is! Oh, Kitty, Kitty,
I _did_ think you had a kind heart! But to be the means of hurting
anybody, as you have hurt Esther,--it is--it is--"
"Laura, Laura, don't," as Laura here broke down in a little fit of
sobbing. "Of course I didn't know--I didn't think. Oh, dear, I'll tell
the girls I didn't mean a word I said,--that I'm the biggest liar in
town; that Esther is an heiress; that--that--oh, I'll do or say
anything, if you'll only stop crying, Laura. There, there," as Laura
tried to stifle a fresh sob, "that's right, take my handkerchief,--yours
is sopping wet, and--My goodness, there comes Maud Aplin--she _must_ not
see us sniffing and sobbing like this, she'll say we've had a quarrel.
Here, let us go into the little recitation-room, quick now, before she
sees us."
And into the little recitation-room Laura was very willing to go and
hide her tear-stained face from inquisitive eyes, while Kitty, penitent
and overcome more by the spectacle of these tears than by a sense of her
own shortcomings, followed briskly after, with this cheerful little
running fire of remarks, anent the Art Club lecturer: "I'm just
crazy--_crazy_ to see this Monsieur Baudouin; for what do you think Flo
Aplin says? That he is a real viscomte or marquis, or something of that
sort, but that he came into his title only a year or two ago, and is
much prouder of his reputation as an art authority and critic and his
name, Pierre Baudouin,--it's his own name, you know,--and he won his
reputation under that. The Aplins met him last year in Paris. Windlow
Aplin, who is studying art there, just swears by him, and says the
artists dote on him, and Flo says he is perfectly elegant. Etching is
his great fad now, and he is going to lecture this afternoon on etching
and etchers. Oh, I'm just crazy to see and hear him, aren't you?"
Laura had by this time conquered her tears, thanks to Kitty's
adroitness, and, with a half-humorous, half-grateful appreciation of
this adroitness, she thought to herself as she walked round to the Art
Club with Kitty that afternoon, "Kitty _has_ a good heart, after all."
The Art Club hall was quite full as they entered; but there were seats
well down in front, and there they found most of the school girls under
Miss Milwood's charge. Esther was one of this party; and Kitty made a
great point of leaning forward and bowing to her with much graciousness.
The next moment she was whispering to Laura, "There, didn't I behave
prettily to Esther this time? You'll see now--" But at that instant a
slender dark-eyed gentleman, accompanied by one of the artists, was seen
coming rapidly up the aisle, and, "Look, look, there he is!" cried
Kitty, "and _isn't_ he elegant?"
And Laura looking, as she was told, found no reason to disagree with
this comment.
"But I _do_ hope," whispered the irrepressible Kitty again, as Monsieur
Baudouin ascended the platform,--"I _do_ hope he is as interesting as he
looks; appearances are deceitful sometimes." But no one of that audience
found Pierre Baudouin's appearance deceitful. He was more than
interesting,--he was enthralling as he went on with his almost loving
consideration of his subject, setting before his hearers, in a melodious
voice and very good English, some of the results of his great knowledge
and experience. You could have heard a pin drop, as the saying goes, so
spell-bound was the audience; and at the end there was a warm outburst
of applause, and then a gathering about him, as he left the platform,
of the various artists, and others who were eager to speak with him. He
was standing with this little group, when Laura, watching and listening
just outside of it, heard him say, "There is a remarkable etching that I
wish I could show you, for it proves completely the theory I have just
placed before you. I saw it but once, in the artist's own studio, as I
was passing through Munich. When a little later I heard that the artist
was dead, and his effects for sale, I tried to buy the etching, but was
told that it had been given to a friend, a Mr. John Wybern. Since then,
I have learned that Mr. Wybern has also died, and I started again on my
search; but it has been fruitless so far, though I still hope I may come
across it, and be able, if not to add it to my collection, to examine it
again. The artist, by the way, is the same one that painted that
remarkable picture, 'Rebecca the Jewess.'"
Laura turned hastily around to look for Esther. She had not to look far.
Esther was just behind her. "Esther, did you hear?" she asked.
Esther nodded.
"Do you know about the etching?"
[Illustration: She was addressing Monsieur Baudouin]
"Yes, it hangs in our parlor. I wish I dared go forward now and tell
him."
"Oh, Esther, do, do!"
But Esther hung back. Then Laura obeyed an impulse that forever after
filled her with astonishment. She pressed forward, and, before she had
time to think twice, was addressing Monsieur Baudouin, and telling him
what she knew.
"What! you can tell me where this etching is? You can take me to it?" he
exclaimed, with a sort of joyful incredulity.
Laura answered by turning to Esther and saying. "This young lady can
tell you more about it. The etching is in the possession of her family."
"Ah, and this young lady is--"
Laura reached back, seized Esther's hand, and pulled her to her side.
"Is Miss Bodn."
"Mees _Bodn_!" he repeated with a start. "Mees _Bodn_! Ah, pardon me, do
you spell this name B-o-w-d-o-i-n?"
"You do, you do," as Esther answered in the affirmative; "and, pardon
again, are you related to one Henri--Henry, you call it here--Henry
Pierre Bowdoin?"
"My father's name was Henry Pierre Bowdoin."
"Then, Mademoiselle," and Monsieur Baudouin stretched out his hand, and
a smile lit up his face, "you must be a relation of mine; and three
years ago, when I was in this country, and tried to find the American
branch of our family that spelled its name Bowdoin and was called Bodn,
but which was originally Baudouin, the old Huguenot name, I was told it
had died out. Where were you then, Mademoiselle?"
"In Munich, where my mother and I had lived with my uncle John Wybern,
since my father's death, years ago."
"Your uncle! John Wybern was your uncle? So--so is it possible, is it
possible? And I find the two objects I have been hunting, so far apart,
together! It is most astonishing and yet most simple. And your
mother--your mother is living? Yes, and you will give me your address,
that I may hasten to pay my respects to her;" and Monsieur whipped out a
little note-book and wrote down, probably with greater satisfaction than
it had ever been written before, "McVane Street."
"Most astonishing and yet most simple," as Monsieur had truly said; yet
to the flock of Miss Milwood's girls, who, well down to the front, had
lost nothing of this surprising interview, it was only "most
astonishing," and to some of them most humiliating and mortifying. Kitty
Grant was the first to voice this mortification, by turning upon them
and saying, as Esther disappeared with Monsieur Baudouin, "Say, girls,
how do you feel now? _I_ feel like one of Cinderella's sisters. Laura
now--Laura, where are you?" But Laura had also disappeared. She wanted
to be by herself and think it over. But what of Esther,--Esther, who had
been neglected and disregarded and despised? What of Esther, as she
stood there, and as she walked away with Monsieur Baudouin? Esther was
the least astonished of them all, for years ago she had been familiar
with the facts of her paternal family history, and knew that she was a
descendant of Pierre Baudouin, a French Huguenot, who had fled to
America to escape religious persecution, and knew that the name Baudouin
had suffered a change to Bowdoin; knew, too, that as Bowdoin it had been
made illustrious in America's annals, and worn the honors of the highest
offices of the State. She knew all this; but she knew also that this was
long ago, and that her father was the last of his name in America, and
when he died, after a wasting illness that exhausted his fortune, there
was little thought given to the fact that the old Huguenot root still
existed in France, though half-playful, half-serious mention had now and
then been made of the kinsfolk in France they would sometime go to seek.
All this Esther had stored away in her memory, so that when Monsieur
Baudouin announced himself as the kinsman from France, it was more like
a long-anticipated event than a surprise. And all this she told to Laura
in the days that followed,--those dear, delightful days, when there was
no difficulty put in the way of going to McVane Street; when McVane
Street, indeed, according to Kitty, became quite the fashion with the
artists flocking to see the wonderful etching, and Monsieur Baudouin
holding forth upon its merits to them as he made himself at home with
his American kinsfolk, who were now discovered to be such charming folk.
Laura sometimes in these days blazed up with indignation and disgust as
she noted the sudden attentions that were bestowed upon Esther and her
mother. No one now spoke of emigrants and foreigners in connection with
these dwellers on McVane Street. Jack Brooks himself seemed to forget
that David Wybern looked like a Jew, even before it was found that David
and all of his people were of the most unmixed Puritan stock!
"And I, too," thought Laura,--"I, too, muddled and mistook things as I
shouldn't, if Esther and her mother had lived in a different quarter. If
they had lived anywhere over the hill, should I have fancied, though
they _were_ so poor, that Mrs. Bowdoin must have been a professional
model? No, no, I should have thought at once, what I _know_ now, that
the artist was her friend, and that she sat to him as a friendly favor,
like any other lady."
But while Laura thus scourged herself with the rest, Esther and her
mother had set her apart from all the rest for their special love and
confidence,--a love and confidence that are as fresh to-day as when the
mother and daughter sailed away with Monsieur Baudouin, a year ago, to
visit their French kinsfolk.
BECKY.
CHAPTER I.
"Number five!" called out shrilly and impatiently the saleswoman at the
lace counter in a great dry-goods establishment. The call was repeated
in a still more impatient tone before there was any response; then there
rushed up a girl of ten or eleven, whose big black eyes looked forth
fearlessly, some people said impudently, from a little peaked face, so
thin and small that it seemed all eyes, and in the neighborhood where
the child lived she was often nicknamed "Eyes."
"Why didn't you come when you were first called?" asked the saleswoman,
angrily.
"Couldn't; I'se waitin' for somethin'," answered the child, coolly.
"You were staring at and list'nin' to those ladies at the ribbon
counter; I saw you," retorted the saleswoman.
"Well, I tole yer, I'se waitin' for somethin'," the girl answered,
showing two rows of teeth in a mischievous grin.
A younger saleswoman, standing near, giggled.
"Don't laugh at her, Lizzie," rebuked the elder; "she's getting too big
for her boots with her impudence."
"They ain't boots; they're shoes." And a thin little leg was thrust
forward to show a foot encased in a shabby old shoe much too large for
it.
Then, like a flash, the "imp," as the saleswoman often termed her,
seized the parcel that was ready for her, and darted off with it.
"You'll get reported if you don't look out," the saleswoman called after
her.
The "imp" turned her head and winked back at the irritated saleswoman in
such a grotesque fashion that the lively Lizzie giggled again, for which
she was told she ought to be ashamed of herself. Good-natured Lizzie
admitted the truth of this accusation, but declared that Becky was so
funny she "just couldn't help laughing."
"You call it 'funny,'" the other exclaimed; "_I_ call it impudence. She
ain't afraid of anything or anybody. Look at her now! there she is back
at the ribbon counter. I wonder what those swells are talking about,
that she's so taken up with. She's up to some mischief, I'll bet you,
Lizzie."
"I guess it's only her fun. She's going to take 'em off by 'n' by," said
Lizzie.
This was one of the "imp's" accomplishments,--taking people off. She was
a great mimic, and on rainy days when the girls ate their luncheon in
the room that the firm had allotted to them for that purpose, Miss Becky
would "take off," the various people that had come under her keen
observation during the day. "Private theatricals," the lively Lizzie
called this "taking off," as Becky strutted and minced, with her chin
up, her dress lifted in one hand, while with the other she held a pair
of scissors for an eyeglass, and peered through the bows at a piece of
cloth, which she picked and pecked and commented upon in fine-lady
fashion,--"just like the swells," Lizzie declared. It was quite natural
then for her to conclude that it was fun of this sort that Becky was "up
to," in her close attention to the "swell" customers at the ribbon
counter. "She was studyin' 'em, just as actresses study their
play-parts," Lizzie thought to herself; and half an hour later, when she
met Becky in the lunch-room, she called out to her,--
"Come, Becky, give us the swells at the ribbon counter."
"Eh?" said Becky.
Lizzie repeated her request, and the other girls joined in: "Yes, Becky,
give us the swells at the ribbon counter; we want some fun."
"They warn't funny," answered Becky, shortly.
"Oh! now, Becky, what'd you stand there lis'nin' and lookin' at 'em so
long for?"
"'Cause they were sayin' somethin' I wanted to hear."
"Of course they were. What was it about, Becky?"
"May-day, flowers and queens and baskets."
"Oh, my! Well, tell us how they said it, Becky."
"I tole yer they warn't funny; they warn't o' that kind that peeks
through them long stick glasses and puckers up their lips. They talked
straight 'long, and said very int'restin' things," said Becky.
"Well, tell us; tell us what 'twas," exclaimed Lizzie.
"Oh, you wouldn't care for what they's talkin' 'bout. They warn't sayin'
anythin' 'bout beaux or clothes," Becky replied with a grin.
A shout of laughter went up from the rest of the company, who all knew
the lively Lizzie's favorite topics. Lizzie joined in the laugh, and
cried good-naturedly,--
"Never mind, Becky, if I'm not up to your ribbon swells talk; tell us
about it."
"Oh, yes! tell us, tell us!" echoed the others.
Becky took a bite out of a slice of bread, and munching it slowly,
said,--
"I tole yer once 't was 'bout May-day and flowers and queens and
baskets."