JESSIE'S DECLARATION
"AND you'll stay here always, Millie! Won't you? Promise not to go
away. Promise not to think about any other home."
Jessie had flown eagerly upstairs, two steps at a time, after
lengthy confabulation with Miss Perkins. The state of affairs had
gradually oozed out, in response to judicious squeezing; and Jessie
had controlled her own ardent pleasure, lest from a sheer spirit of
opposition, Miss Perkins should decide against having a permanent
lodger. Difficulties lay in the path of an immediate settlement of the
question. Hero was the ostensible stumbling-stone; jealousy of Jessie's
love for Mildred was a more potent barrier.
Of the latter fact Jessie was ignorant, but she had abundance to say
in defence of Hero. He was the dearest and sweetest of dogs! Always
good, and always obedient. He never dug holes in the garden; and he was
learning to rub his paws on the doormat whenever he came in. Had not
aunt Barbara herself, seeing him at the occupation two days earlier,
remarked that he did it "uncommon like a Christian"? Miss Perkins could
not disavow so recent an utterance.
"Well, I don't know as I care—particular. It's got to be, I s'pose.
Things has mostly got to be as nobody wouldn't ever choose," said Miss
Perkins, In a mood of depressed philosophising. "But I'm not a-going to
have a fuss made about Mildred, mind. She'll have to take things as she
finds them; and if she don't like 'em, she'll have to go. And you'll
have the doing of her room. I've enough of my own to see to, and it's
time you should help. We shall find it a lot of bother, all the year
round."
Jessie forbore to remind Miss Perkins of her oft-uttered longing for a
permanent lodger. She forbore even to protest against the insinuation
that hitherto she had not helped. In her eagerness to keep Mildred, she
would have endured more than this.
"O I'll do the room all right," she made answer cheerfully. And the
moment she could escape, she fled to Mildred's retreat.
"You will stay always, won't you, Mildred?" she reiterated.
"'Always' means a great deal. I should like to stay for a time, at any
rate."
"Only for a time! Not to live here!"
"It must depend, partly, on whether I can find any work to do. I
couldn't be idle, Jessie. I think I should go out of my mind. You
don't know what the feeling of loneliness is—not a person in the world
belonging to me; not one relation nearer than a cousin of my father's,
and he is a crusty old man, who never even writes. I have no real ties
now, and it is so strange."
Jessie listened seriously. "I haven't ties either, I suppose. Ought I
to care, Millie? I don't think I do, very much. There are so many nice
people in the world. Of course aunt Barbara is a tie; but I am not so
very fond of her. I am much more fond of other friends,—of you!"
"And of the Groates', for instance?"
"Yes," blushing, "I do like Mrs. Groates. And so will you when you get
to know her. But what sort of work do you want to find?"
Mildred explained slowly. She could teach, she said, if only the
simpler branches of teaching were required; but she would very much
prefer dressmaking. No, she had never been a dressmaker. Her father
had had a good post in a country bank, and he had toiled to the last.
Mildred had never had to work for her living, as a matter of necessity.
She had, however, always loved work, especially dressmaking. She knew
herself to be very good at cutting out and fitting. She had always made
her own dresses, and often those of her friends.
Jessie listened with round eyes and exclamations barely suppressed.
"It's the very thing," she could have cried, remembering the Miss
Coxens, and their laments over the difficulty of obtaining any
efficient help. Jessie restrained the first impulse to tell Millie her
thought. It would be better to see the Miss Coxens first, and to lay
the matter before them.
"I should think you might easily get dresses to make," she remarked
judiciously. "We have not many dressmakers here, you know. And if you
can, then you will make Old Maxham your real home! And now I've got to
go out for something, and you must rest, because you look quite tired
with so much talking."
Impulsive Jessie was half-way down the street, before a recollection
surged up of the last time she had seen Miss Sophy Coxen. With the
remembrance came an unpleasantly hot blush. But Miss Sophy Coxen had
to be encountered some time; and the present hour was as good as any
other. So Jessie hurried on.
"Dear me! Why, it actually is Jessie Perkins at last!" declared Miss
Coxen, peeping out of the window. "I began to wonder if she ever meant
to come near us again."
"And what a colour she has, to be sure!" chimed in Miss Sophy. "She
hadn't that when I saw her over the way—you know, sister! She was as
pasty as a tallow candle, and as shaky as anything."
"I wouldn't say one word to Jessie about that, Sophy, if I was you.
Girls don't like to have it thought that they care for anybody in
particular, you know; and I dare say it would vex her to know that we
think what we do think."
"Ah, well, we know what we know, and nothing can undo that," sighed
Miss Sophy oracularly. "But mum's the word, sister."
Miss Sophy spoke the word in happy oblivion of the fact that she had
already told her story to at least fifteen individuals belonging to Old
Maxham.
"Well, Jessie, how d'you do? Come in, my dear," Miss Coxen said
with great cordiality, and both sisters squeezed Jessie's hands in
affectionate style.
Jessie, still wearing a high colour, seated herself promptly with her
back to the window, and proceeded to pour forth particulars of Mildred
and of Mildred's prospects. This was a disappointment to the pair,
for they wanted her to talk about Jack, not about Mildred, and Jessie
refused to be turned aside from her subject.
She had so often heard them lament the absence of any good dressmaking
in the place, except their own, that she was greatly disappointed to
find her overtures on behalf of Millie met with blank looks and solemn
silence. Miss Coxen smoothed her apron, and Miss Sophy pulled her
ringlets, and neither uttered any response.
"I thought you'd be quite delighted," hazarded Jessie.
"My dear, you expect—really—too much!" Sophy took her cue from Miss
Coxen's face. "That we should be delighted—" Miss Sophy began to
sniffle, "delighted—to have the bread taken out of our mouths!" Another
sniffle,—"By this interloper from foreign parts—"
"But—" protested the dismayed Jessie.
"She is no doubt quite an experienced dressmaker. O yes, and up in all
the fashions! She will leave us far behind!" sighed Miss Coxen.
"And to think of Miss Perkins being the one to bring this calamity
on our heads," wept Miss Sophy—"our old friend, Miss Perkins! And
Jessie!—that I dandled on my lap, when she wasn't that high—" and Miss
Sophy sniffled anew.
"But I thought you wanted help so much. I'm sure you have always said
so."
"O dear, dear, how people do misunderstand one!" moaned Miss Sophy in
mournful tones.
"A little moderate amount of help, my dear, just at pressing times, we
might require; but not to be supplanted,—not to have the food taken
out of our mouths by a London dressmaker," murmured Miss Coxen. "A
first-class London dressmaker!"
No doubt, Jessie, in describing her friend's powers, real or supposed,
had laid the colours on rather thickly, and Miss Coxen had immediately
proceeded to deepen them still further.
"Millie isn't a London dressmaker. She isn't anything of that sort.
Why, I told you she had always lived in the country, and had only done
dressmaking for her own amusement. And I think you ought to be glad to
help her,—all alone in the world as she is, with no home or friends.
Other people have tried to help her, at any rate. She won't take the
bread out of anybody's mouth; she is a great deal more likely to take
it out of her own. Mildred isn't at all a sort of person to do harm
to other people. And you have often and often told me that you might
easily take in a lot more work, if only you had a third pair of hands
to depend upon. And now that you might have the third pair, you just
turn against it."
Jessie's little outburst was not without effect. The sisters looked
one at another, shook their respective heads, and finally promised to
"think about things."
"We couldn't always give her work, that is certain. Not when there
isn't much doing, you know. But just now and then, perhaps. We might
try what she is worth, you know. People so often say they can work who
really can't put two breadths together. But of course we should like to
do anything we can to help her. You ought to be sure of that, my dear.
And if we find her capable and not pushing, and willing to do what she
is told, why, then, just once in a way—"