I have been here four weeks to-day. If there are any people in or
around Twickenham Town that I do not know, it is because they are not
knowable. I love people, and, being naturally sociable and not very
particular, I have had a perfectly grand time making acquaintances with
the high and the low and, the in-betweeners; and the sick and well, and
the dear and the queer, and the ancestrals and up-comers, and the rich
and the poor, and every other variety that grows; and now I am as
familiar with most of the family histories as the oldest inhabitant.
That's the nice part of living in a small place. Something depends on
you and you depend on all the rest of the town, but at home you're lost
in numbers and only a few know you're living. Here everybody knows,
also they know some things that perhaps had better be unknown. As for
talk, they are the best talkers on earth, and there's no subject under
the sun they won't talk about. It's an inheritance, Father says, and
has been handed down from ages past, and, though they don't read very
much, they can do more with a little knowledge than most learned people
with their information, and they make anything they mention interesting
from the way they mention it. I love to hear them, and I've heard a
good deal.
Dear, precious Miss Susanna in the secrecy of my bedroom gave me a
little talk a few nights ago, and said she hoped I wouldn't mind, but
as I was young and inexperienced she thought it her duty to tell me
that I must be careful and not too informal, for certain people
wouldn't understand; and that while the Holts were a very good,
respectable family, still they were not-- She stopped and coughed a
little, and of course I understood, but I pretended I didn't, and told
her they were perfectly healthy and I had had more fun with the Holt
children than with any in town, but if she preferred they should not
come to her house to see me I would just stop in theirs sometimes, as I
would not like them to think I was afraid to go with them. I wasn't,
for while I knew they were not historic, they were the most interesting
children I'd ever seen, and it seemed pretty cruel that they were left
out of things because they didn't have forefathers to hang on to, or
money, which of course would speak for itself. And dear, angelic Miss
Susanna, who is so worn out with boarders and their special kind of
human-nature horridness at times that she's hardly got body enough to
cover her soul, said I mustn't misunderstand her, but the Holts had
never gone in the same circles as the other people I had met, and that
customs, though unkind, were hard to overcome, and the oldest son--
I told her not to worry about the oldest son. He could go anywhere he
wanted and with any one he wanted by the time he was through college,
which his parents were working themselves to death to send him through,
and it was very probable that several girls in town would be glad to
add their grandfathers to his natural endowments before many years were
over. But if she didn't care for me to accept his attentions, as Miss
Araminta Armstrong called them, I could always have an engagement when
he asked me to go anywhere. She looked so shocked and distressed that
I told her I didn't approve of telling stories any more than she did,
and for most sorts people ought to be branded, but I'd much rather tell
one of that land than hurt a person's feelings. And it wouldn't be
untrue to say I had an engagement, for I always had one to go
everywhere and anywhere, even if I didn't keep it; and again she
coughed and looked so pained that I took her in my arms and whirled
around the room with her and told her not to worry about me, either. I
wouldn't disgrace her by knowing the wrong people too well, but
everybody had their peculiarities and one of mine was I was going to
know anybody I wanted to. I always thought a lady could, and, besides,
I liked any kind of person who was interesting, and the best born ones
were often very stupid, which of course was the wrong thing to say. So
I had to give her another whirl, and by the time she got her breath it
was time to see about supper, and she has never referred to the subject
since.
Miss Susanna is a darling little lady of the old school (whatever the
old school was) and I love her, but I am of my time as she is of hers,
and I don't see her way any more than she sees mine. She ought to wear
hoop-skirts and brocaded silks and lace fichus and mits, and sit with
her beautiful hands folded in her lap and her tiny little feet on a
footstool, and instead she works from morning to night trying to help
the good-for-nothingest servants that were ever hired by tired ladies,
except Uncle Henson, and Aunt Mandy, the cook, who have been with her
for years and years. She's worn out. That's what's the matter with
Miss Susanna, and that selfish, lazy little piece of pinkness who is
now away doesn't lift her hand to help her unless it is to make a cake
occasionally. I don't know how to make cake and never expect to know,
as very good kinds can be bought, but I can wash dishes. I do it every
morning and she dries them, so limp Eliza can go up-stairs and clean up
the bedrooms, and we have a beautiful time talking about what a change
comes over human beings when they board. That is, I do the talking and
she shakes her head at me, but it does her good, as it gives sound to
things she can't say. Most of her time has to be spent in thinking
what to put in people's stomachs and fixing it to be put; and, from the
quantity that goes in, boarders must have much better appetites than
people who keep house. They eat and yet are never full. There'll be
no hope of heaven for me if I ever have to keep boarders. I'd sweep
them out with a broom certainly once a week. That is, in my mind, if
my hands didn't. But Miss Susanna will never sweep them out. The
sanctuary in which I let out for her is the pantry, and all the things
she won't say I say for her. Yesterday she laughed so she broke a cup.