MRS WILKIE'S POWDER.
Rose left Naylor standing on the gravel, and went into the house,
making her way leisurely up to her room.
The parlour door stood ajar, disclosing only darkness within, to eyes
coming straight from the outer glare of sunshine. It seemed cool in
there, with the rustling sea-breeze sifting fitfully through the
closed Venetians; and there were gurglings of smothered laughter,
which told that the place was not deserted. She stepped within the
gloom, and, as her eyes grew used to it, she became able to make out
the tenants.
A cheerful crew of girls, standing and seated in a ring, occupied the
centre of the floor. In their midst sat old Mrs Wilkie on a low
ottoman, which she occupied by herself, like a kind of throne, fanning
herself industriously till the short grey curls upon her temples
danced and fluttered in the artificial gale. The new blue ribbons in
her cap and the old blue eyes in her head danced in unison and
elation, and a proud self-satisfied smile played about her lips, and
deepened the creases in her cheeks, which looked round and rosy like
an overkept winter apple. She was in her glory, and she gave yet a
more energetic flap to the palm-leaf fan, as she pursed her lips
together, and prepared to speak again.
"Yes, my dears," were her words as Rose joined the circle, "blue was
always my colour. You see I am fair--'like a lily,' the young men used
to tell me I was," and she made a flourish with her fan. "But that was
years ago," and she blew a sigh which made her chest heave like a
portly bellows. "And then I had a colour--like a Cheeny-rose, the
haverels would have it; but the Scotch gentlemen are great hands to
blaw in the lugs of silly girls. Not that I was ever the wan to let my
head be turned with their nonsense--but still they had grounds for
what they said."
"You were a beauty," said Lettice Deane--"I can see that;" and the
girls exchanged glances brimming with amusement and incredulity, such
as those feel whose bloom is still in the present tense, when one of
the have-beens puts in her claim to personal charms.
"Yes, my dear, I was admired--in my day," and the double chin went up
with a snap, to join the rest of the self-complacent countenance.
"Don't say was, Mrs Wilkie," Lettice answered. "You are a dangerous
woman still. It is well that mamma is with us here, to look after the
old man, or--or---- Nobody knows what might happen. These old
gentlemen are very susceptible."
"I don't think I am acquainted with your papaw, my dear," said the old
woman, looking round the tittering circle with rising colour, and
bridling as if the jest perhaps contained more truth than the scoffer
wot of. "But I never was a flirt; and now, in my poseetion, one has to
be careful, and set an example of propriety. But, as I was saying--and
it's well for young people to know these things--you don't take proper
care of yourselves in this country. You should see our Scotch
complexions when we're young. Strawberries and crame--that's what we
look like. But then we take a hantle care of our chairms; and we live
healthy. It would be good for some Yankee girls if they were put
through a course of proper conduck"--and she looked straight at Lucy
Naylor, the most flagrant of the titterers--"and simple living, by one
of our old Scotch grandmothers. You're for ever drinking icewater and
hot tea, out here; and how can you expeck your insides to be healthy
after that? And you're all the time at candies or pickles, not to
speak of hot bread, and beef-steaks and pitaities for breakfast, as if
ye had a day's ploughing before you--and you just lounging on soffies
and easy-chairs the whole forenoon, with some bit silly novel in your
hands, and nothing to exercise either the body or the intelleck. My
son, the Deputy Minister of Edication, says you're just destroying
yourselves."
"Tell us about _him_, dear Mrs Wilkie," said Lettice, cutting short
the prelection. "We know our faults already, though I fear we are not
likely to mend them. Tell us about the young man. That will be far
more interesting. What do you call his profession? Something very
long-winded and grand, I know."
"He is the Deputy Minister of Edication, for the Province. And it _is_
a grand poseetion for so young a man, or for any man--whatever you may
think. And as for being 'long-winded,' you don't understand. He doesna
preach, my dear--though he could do that too, if there was occasion.
It was that I bred him to. But this pays better. He has his handsome
income for just sitting still in his chair and seeing that his
inferiors work hard enough. And then, there's what the opposeetion
papers, with their ill-scrapet tongues, call pickin's! Oh yes! there's
fine pickin's. But I mustna be telling tales out o' school."
"He must be a bishop, then, Mrs Wilkie, if he does not preach. We call
boss ministers bishops. Do you call them deputies in Canada? How odd
of you! And yet I danced with him last night. Think of dancing with a
bishop! It sounds positively profane. What a country Canada must be!"
"The lassie's in a creel! My Peter's no that kind of minister avaw. I
_bred_ him for a minister, it's true--a minister of the Gospel, and
very far from the same kind with your bishops, and their white gowns,
and red things hanging down their backs. It's a U.P. he would have
been, if I had had my way. But Peter preferred being a minister of the
Crown; and there's no denying it _pays_ better. There's no vows laid
on a minister of the Crown. They may dance, or do anything they
like--and very queer things some of them do like, it seems to me. But
Mis-ter Wilkie's very circumspeck. He's Deputy Minister, you see.
'Deputy' means that all the pickin's"--and she winked, poor
soul--"go to _him_; though sometimes he has to give a share to the
chief--quietly, you understand, my dears, for the chief is responsible
to Parliament, and there would be a scandal if it came out. They're
fond of having a scandal in Canada when politics are dull. Then the
chief has to resign, but the deputy just sits still. He's a servant of
the Crown, you see; so he goes on drawing his pay just the same,
whatever chief the politeetians may appint over him. That comes of our
having a Crown in Canada. It's a fine institution, and troubles
nobody. It would be telling you Yankees if you had wan. Ye wouldn't be
turned out of your comfortable offices every four years, then; and
more, it would keep you steady. Ye have no respeck and no reverence
here, and no nothing;" and again she looked severely in Lucy Naylor's
face--that ill-regulated young person having fallen a-laughing worse
than ever.
"It must be nice to be married to a Deputy Minister of the Crown,"
Lettice observed, demurely.
"Ye may say that; and there's more than you thinks it, I can tell you,
my dear. The young girls where we come from are just pulling caps to
see who is to be the wan. It's really shameless the way they behave,
and many's the good laugh me and Mis-ter Wilkie has at their
ongoings."
"I suppose you are to choose the successful candidate?"
"A mother must know the kind that will suit her boay best. But it's a
sore responsibeelity, my dears. It would be terrible if the
expurriment didn't answer; and he's very hard to please, and terrible
fond of his own way."
"Couldn't you say a good word for one of us here, dear Mrs Wilkie?"
asked Lettice with her most winning smile. "Just see what a lot of us
there are!--and we have all to find husbands yet: every variety of
girl you can think of--tall and short, dark and fair. Surely one of us
might answer. It would be a gain to all. If one were provided for, the
chance would be better, by so much, for all the rest when the next
_parti_ came along."
"Peter must have intelleck, he says, and high culture. I'm fear'd ye
wouldn't just answer, my dear--though you're a nice girl, I'll allow,
and--well--and comely."
Lettice coloured to the temples, and her well-arched eyebrows
contracted into something approaching to a frown. It is eminently
provoking, when one fancies one has been rather successful in drawing
out an oddity, and making sport, to find the tables suddenly turned,
and one's self made the butt.
"I was not thinking of myself," she said, and there was a tremor of
crossness in her voice, which made her discomfiture more amusingly
evident to the rest--"or any one else, for that matter. I know I would
not take a gift of the fellow, with his washy grey eyes, and stiff
priggish pomposity."
"The grapes are sour, my dear. Did you never hear tell of the story of
the fox? But never you mind. There's a man appinted for you, I make no
doubt; and if there is, ye'll get him, for as long as he is about
appearing."
There was a scream of laughter, and Lettice, too angry to trust her
voice with a retort, turned on her heel and went out, while the old
lady sniffed vindictively and pursed her lips, as if she could have
said much more, had the offender allowed her time.
"The impident monkey!" she muttered at last. "Does she think she is to
make sport of _me_, without getting as good as she gives?" "That's a
forward girl," she added aloud. "It isn't becoming for a young woman
to be putting in for a gentleman in that barefaced way. And ye needn't
laugh, my dears; some of you are not much better. As for Mis-ter
Wilkie, ye may keep your minds easy; he can get better than any of you
where we come from, just for the raising of his finger."
"Poor Lettice!" said Rose. "Are you not a little hard on her? I am
sure she did not mean to be provoking."
"If _you_ say that, my dear, I am willing to suppose it. But really,
I'm just bothered with young girrls trying to catch my son, every
place I go. It's like the way bees come bizzing round a sugar-bowl; or
wasps, I might say," and she flung an angry glance at Lucy Naylor,
caught laughing again. "You are the young lady, if I'm not mistaken,
that saved the man's life this morning? It was a noble ack; and you're
an example to us women, that are more given to hang about a man till
he sinks, than to bear him up when he's in trouble. You'll be staying
here, like the rest of us?"
"Yes; I am here with Mrs Deane and her daughter."
"That girrl that was so impertinent to me just now?--pretending to
cock her nose at a Deputy Minister! Set her up!"
"Miss Deane is an heiress and a beauty. All the men in Chicago were
wild about her last winter. She did not mean to offend you, I am sure;
though perhaps she is a little spoilt by all the attention she
receives."
"An heiress, is she? And these will all be heiresses too, maybe?
They're forward and saucy enough for that or anything," she added,
tossing her head at the retiring figures trooping away to overtake
Lettice, and leaving the old woman, whose good-humour they had worn
out, standing alone with Rose. "If it was you, now, I would be proud
to hear that ye were an heiress, and to know you. Ye've got spurrit;
and I'm sure ye have sense as well as good looks. Ye're not so young
as thae light-headed tawpies, with their empty laughs, that have gone
out just now, but you're just in your prime."
"I am five-and-twenty," said Rose, with a twinkle of dawning mischief.
"That's within two years of the age I was myself when I was married.
It would be just one like you that I could welcome to my bosom, for a
daughter," and she looked graciously in the other's face, to accept
the answering look of gratitude which she felt was her due. "It's a
sore responsibeelity, I can tell you, to a right-thinking mother, to
get her only son--and _such_ a son!--properly settled in life. They've
no sense, even the best of men, when it comes to choosing a wife.
There's a glamour comes over them, and they just fall a prey to some
designing cuttie that has nothing but the duds she stands in, and
neither sense nor experience. But I mean to stand between my boay and
that misfortune, at any rate."
"He must feel deeply indebted to you."
"I don't know if he does, my dear. The men are contrar' cattle, and
very thrawn. But I have my duty to do. He's my objeck in life. I left
home to come out and live with him in a foreign land; and that was no
small sacrifice at my time of life, I can tell you. It's true he has a
fine piseetion and a good income; but if ye had seen the way he was
being put upon, and the waste, when I came out to look after him, it
would have made your hair stand up. A whole peck of pitaities biled
every day for wan man's dinner! The cook's mother kept pigs, ye see.
That's where the pitaities went. But I made a cleen sweep, I can tell
you."
"It must have been rather trying to you."
"Eh yes! it's been very hard upon my nerves. I'm not strong; though
perhaps ye wouldn't think it. My colour's so good that nobody will
believe there's much the matter with me. But my heart's affecket, my
dear. If you could just feel the palpitations--thump--thump--like
a smiddie hammer! ever since thae girrls with their jawing went
out,"--and she laid her hand upon her ample chest and closed her eyes.
"How distressing! Does your medical man give you hopes of getting over
it?"
"That's in Higher Hands, my dear. We are trying the effecks of sea-air
on my complaint, just now. That's what has brought us all the way down
from Ontario. The doctor thinks I want bracing, and he gives me
poothers to take. You see, it's homoeopathy we are trying. And that
'minds me: this is my time for a poother. What can have come over
Peter that he isn't here to give me it?"
"Can you not take your powder yourself?"
"No; it's small and delicate, and not easy to apply. The doctor
ordered it to be sprinkled on the tongue. I wish Peter was here. The
thoughtless rascal!"
"On the tongue? How odd! Do you think I could do it for you?"
"My dear, if you would! Ye're a dear lamb, and ye'll be a treasure to
any mother-in-law that gets you."
"Have you the powder?"
"I carry them about with me, to prevent accidents, when I'm living in
a strange house. The maids might be for tasting them, ye see, and
nobody knows what might happen."
Mrs Wilkie sat down in a chair facing the window, handed a tiny parcel
to Rose, and stretched out her feet in front, while she laid back her
head, grasping the chair-arms, shutting her eyes tight, and opening
her mouth wide to display the flat red tongue. It was a moment of
tension with her; she was stretched to her utmost, holding her breath,
and with every muscle tightened in expectant rigidity.
Rose opened the parcel, which contained a pinch of white powder, and
proceeded to administer; but the appearance of the patient was so
comic that she had to forbear while calming her risible inclinations,
lest her hand should shake and the precious remedy fall on a wrong
place. At length she felt steady, and began to sprinkle as directed.
But the sprinkling took time. The powder was to be evenly scattered
over the member, or evil results would ensue; and meanwhile the
patient was holding in her breath. She clutched the chair-arms, and
strove valiantly; but nature gave way at length. Just as the last
flake descended to its place, the imprisoned wind broke loose with a
mighty sigh; a white cloud ascended between herself and Rose, while
the outstretched jaws relaxed and came together; she opened her eyes
and sat up, but the "poother" was scattered on the viewless air, and
the old lady had little homoeopathy that morning.