AND.

There is a piece of Z----, just over the river, that they call

"And."

It began among the school-girls; Barbara Holabird had christened it,

with the shrewdness and mischief of fourteen years old. She said the

"and-so-forths" lived there.

It was a little supplementary neighborhood; an after-growth, coming

up with the railroad improvements, when they got a freight station

established on that side for the East Z---- mills. "After Z----,

what should it be but 'And?'" Barbara Holabird wanted to know. The

people who lived there called it East Square; but what difference

did that make?

It was two miles Boston-ward from Z---- centre, where the down

trains stopped first; that was five minutes gained in the time

between it and the city. Land was cheap at first, and sure to come

up in value; so there were some streets laid out at right angles,

and a lot of houses put up after a pattern, as if they had all been

turned out of blanc-mange moulds, and there was "East Square." Then

people began by-and-by to build for themselves, and a little variety

and a good deal of ambition came in. They had got to French roofs

now; this was just before the day of the multitudinous little paper

collar-boxes with beveled covers, that are set down everywhere now,

and look as if they could be lifted up by the chimneys, any time,

and be carried off with a thumb and finger. Two and a half story

houses, Mansarded, looked grand; and the East Square people thought

nothing slight of themselves, though the "old places" and the real

Z---- families were all over on West Hill.

Mrs. Megilp boarded in And for the summer.

"Since Oswald had been in business she couldn't go far from the

cars, you know; and Oswald had a boat on the river, and he and

Glossy enjoyed that so much. Besides, she had friends in Z----,

which made it pleasant; and she was tired, for her part, of crowds

and fashion. All she wanted was a quiet country place. She knew the

Goldthwaites and the Haddens; she had met them one year at

Jefferson."

Mrs. Megilp had found out that she could get larger rooms in And

than she could have at the mountains or the sea-shore, and at half

the price; but this she did not mention. Yet there was nothing

shabby in it, except her carefully _not_ mentioning it.

Mrs. Megilp was Mrs. Grant Ledwith's chief intimate and counselor.

She was a good deal the elder; that was why it was mutually

advantageous. Grant Ledwith was one of the out-in-the-world,

up-to-the-times men of the day; the day in which everything is

going, and everybody that is in active life has, somehow or other,

all that is going. Grant Ledwith got a good salary, an inflated

currency salary; and he spent it all. His daughters were growing up,

and they were stylish and pretty; Mrs. Megilp took a great interest

in Agatha and Florence Ledwith, and was always urging their mother

to "do them justice." "Agatha and Florence were girls who had a

right to every advantage." Mrs. Megilp was almost old enough to be

Laura Ledwith's mother; she had great experience, and knowledge of

the world; and she sat behind Laura's conscience and drove it tandem

with her inclination.

Per contra, it was nice for Mrs. Megilp, who was a widow, and whose

income did not stretch with the elasticity of the times, to have

friends who lived like the Ledwiths, and who always made her

welcome; it was a good thing for Glossy to be so fond of Agatha and

Florence, and to have them so fond of her. "She needed young

society," her mother said. One reason that Glossy Megilp needed

young society might be in the fact that she herself was twenty-six.

Mrs. Megilp had advised the Ledwiths to buy a house in Z----. "It

was just far enough not to be suburban, but to have a society of its

own; and there _was_ excellent society in Z----, everybody knew.

Boston was hard work, nowadays; the distances were getting to be so

great." Up to the West and South Ends,--the material distances,--she

meant to be understood to say; but there was an inner sense to Mrs.

Megilp's utterances, also.

"One might as well be quite out of town; and then it was always

something, even in such city connection as one might care to keep

up, to hail from a well-recognized social independency; to belong to

Z---- was a standing, always. It wasn't like going to Forest Dell,

or Lakegrove, or Bellair; cheap little got-up places with fancy

names, that were strung out on the railroads like French gilt beads

on a chain."

But for all that, Mrs. Ledwith had only got into "And;" and Mrs.

Megilp knew it.

Laura did not realize it much; she had bowing and speaking

acquaintance with the Haddens and the Hendees, and even with the

Marchbankses, over on West Hill; and the Goldthwaites and the

Holabirds, down in the town, she knew very well. She did not care to

come much nearer; she did not want to be bound by any very

stringent and exclusive social limits; it was a bother to keep up

to all the demands of such a small, old-established set. Mrs. Hendee

would not notice, far less be impressed by the advent of her

new-style Brussels carpet with a border, or her full, fresh,

Nottingham lace curtains, or the new covering of her drawing-room

set with cuir-colored terry. Mrs. Tom Friske and Mrs. Philgry, down

here at East Square, would run in, and appreciate, and admire, and

talk it all over, and go away perhaps breaking the tenth commandment

amiably in their hearts.

Mrs. Ledwith's nerves had extended since we saw her as a girl; they

did not then go beyond the floating ends of her blue or rose-colored

ribbons, or, at furthest, the tip of her jaunty laced sunshade; now

they ramified,--for life still grows in some direction,--to her

chairs, and her china, and her curtains, and her ruffled

pillow-shams. Also, savingly, to her children's "suits," and party

dresses, and pic-nic hats, and double button gloves. Savingly; for

there is a leaven of grace in mother-care, even though it be

expended upon these. Her friend, Mrs. Inchdeepe, in Helvellyn Park,

with whom she dined when she went shopping in Boston, had _nothing_

but her modern improvements and her furniture. "My house is my

life," she used to say, going round with a Canton crape duster,

touching tenderly carvings and inlayings and gildings.

Mrs. Megilp was spending the day with Laura Ledwith; Glossy was gone

to town, and thence down to the sea-shore, with some friends.

Mrs. Megilp spent a good many days with Laura. She had large, bright

rooms at her boarding-house, but then she had very gristly veal pies

and thin tapioca puddings for dinner; and Mrs. Megilp's constitution

required something more generous. She was apt to happen in at this

season, when Laura had potted pigeons. A little bird told her; a

dozen little birds, I mean, with their legs tied together in a

bunch; for she could see the market wagon from her window, when it

turned up Mr. Ledwith's avenue.

Laura had always the claret pitcher on her dinner table, too; and

claret and water, well-sugared, went deliciously with the savory

stew.

They were up-stairs now, in Laura's chamber; the bed and sofa were

covered with silk and millinery; Laura was looking over the girls'

"fall things;" there was a smell of sweet marjoram and thyme and

cloves, and general richness coming up from the kitchen; there was a

bland sense of the goodness of Providence in Mrs. Megilp's--no, not

heart, for her heart was not very hungry; but in her eyes and

nostrils.

She was advising Mrs. Ledwith to take Desire and Helena's two green

silks and make them over into one for Helena.

"You can get two whole back breadths then, by piecing it up under

the sash; and you _can't_ have all those gores again; they are quite

done with. Everybody puts in whole breadths now. There's just as

much difference in the _way_ of goring a skirt, as there is between

gores and straight selvages."

"They do hang well, though; they have such a nice slope."

"Yes,--but the stripes and the seams! Those tell the story six rods

off; and then there _must_ be sashes, or postillions, or something;

they don't make anything without them; there isn't any finish to a

round waist unless you have something behind."

"They wore belts last year, and I bought those expensive gilt

buckles. I'm sure they used to look sweetly. But there! a fashion

doesn't last nowadays while you're putting a thing on and walking

out of the house!"

"And don't put in more than three plaits," pursued Mrs. Megilp,

intent on the fate of the green silks. "Everything is gathered; you

see that is what requires the sashes; round waists and gathers have

a queer look without."

"If you once begin to alter, you've got to make all over," said Mrs.

Ledwith, a little fractiously, putting the scissors in with

unwilling fingers. She knew there was a good four days' work before

her, and she was quick with her needle, too.

"Never mind; the making over doesn't cost anything; you turn off

work so easily; and then you've got a really stylish thing."

"But with all the ripping and remodelling, I don't get time to turn

round, myself, and _live_! It is all fall work, and spring work, and

summer work and winter work. One drive rushes pell-mell right over

another. There isn't time enough to make things and have them; the

good of them, I mean."

"The girls get it; we have to live in our children," said Mrs.

Megilp, self-renouncingly. "I can never rest until Glossy is

provided with everything; and you know, Laura, I _am_ obliged to

contrive."

Mrs. Megilp and her daughter Glaucia spent about a thousand dollars

a year, between them, on their dress. In these days, this is a

limited allowance--for the Megilps. But Mrs. Megilp was a woman of

strict pecuniary principle; the other fifteen hundred must pay all

the rest; she submitted cheerfully to the Divine allotment, and

punctually made the two ends meet. She will have this to show, when

the Lord of these servants cometh and reckoneth with them, and that

man who has been also in narrow circumstances, brings his nicely

kept talent out of his napkin.

Desire Ledwith, a girl of sixteen, spoke suddenly from a corner

where she sat with a book,--

"I do wonder who '_they_' are, mamma!"

"Who?" said Mrs. Ledwith, half rising from her chair, and letting

some breadths of silk slide down upon the floor from her lap, as she

glanced anxiously from the window down the avenue. She did not want

any company this morning.

"Not that, mamma; I don't mean anybody coming. The 'theys' that

wear, and don't wear, things; the theys you have to be just like,

and keep ripping and piecing for."

"You absurd child!" exclaimed Mrs. Ledwith, pettishly. "To make me

spill a whole lapful of work for that! They? Why, everybody, of

course."

"Everybody complains of them, though. Jean Friske says her mother is

all discouraged and worn out. There isn't a thing they had last year

that won't have to be made over this, because they put in a breadth

more behind, and they only gore side seams. And they don't wear

black capes or cloth sacks any more with all kinds of dresses; you

must have suits, clear through. It seems to me 'they' is a nuisance.

And if it's everybody, we must be part of it. Why doesn't somebody

stop?"

"Desire, I wish you'd put away your book, and help, instead of

asking silly questions. You can't make the world over, with 'why

don'ts?'"

"I'll _rip_," said Desire, with a slight emphasis; putting her book

down, and coming over for a skirt and a pair of scissors. "But you

know I'm no good at putting together again. And about making the

world over, I don't know but that might be as easy as making over

all its clothes, I'd as lief try, of the two."

Desire was never cross or disagreeable; she was only

"impracticable," her mother said. "And besides that, she didn't know

what she really did want. She was born hungry and asking, with those

sharp little eyes, and her mouth always open while she was a baby.

'It was a sign,' the nurse said, when she was three weeks old. And

then the other sign,--that she should have to be called 'Desire!'"

Mrs. Megilp--for Mrs. Megilp had been in office as long ago as

that--had suggested ways of getting over or around the difficulty,

when Aunt Desire had stipulated to have the baby named for her, and

had made certain persuasive conditions.

"There's the pretty French turn you might give it,--'Desirée.' Only

one more 'e,' and an accent. That is so sweet, and graceful, and

distinguished!"

"But Aunt Desire won't have the name twisted. It is to be real,

plain Desire, or not at all."

Mrs. Megilp had shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, of course it can be that, to christen by, and marry by, and

be buried by. But between whiles,--people pick up names,--you'll

see!"

Mrs. Megilp began to call her "Daisy" when she was two years old.

Nobody could help what Mrs. Megilp took a fancy to call her by way

of endearment, of course; and Daisy she was growing to be in the

family, when one day, at seven years old, she heard Mrs. Megilp say

to her mother,--

"I don't see but that you've all got your _Desire_, after all. The

old lady is satisfied; and away up there in Hanover, what can it

signify to her? The child is 'Daisy,' practically, now, as long as

she lives."

The sharp, eager little gray eyes, so close together in the high,

delicate head, glanced up quickly at speaker and hearer.

"What old lady, mamma, away up in Hanover?"

"Your Aunt Desire, Daisy, whom you were named for. She lives in

Hanover. You are to go and see her there, this summer."

"Will she call me Daisy?"

The little difficulty suggested in this question had singularly

never occurred to Mrs. Ledwith before. Miss Desire Ledwith never

came down to Boston; there was no danger at home.

"No. She is old-fashioned, and doesn't like pet names. She will call

you Desire. That is your name, you know."

"Would it signify if she thought you called me Daisy?" asked the

child frowning half absently over her doll, whose arm she was

struggling to force into rather a tight sleeve of her own

manufacture.

"Well, perhaps she might not exactly understand. People always went

by their names when she was a child, and now hardly anybody does.

She was very particular about having you called for her, and you

_are_, you know. I always write 'Desire Ledwith' in all your books,

and--well, I always _shall_ write it so, and so will you. But you

can be Daisy when we make much of you here at home, just as Florence

is Flossie."

"No, I can't," said the little girl, very decidedly, getting up and

dropping her doll. "Aunt Desire, away up in Hanover, is thinking all

the time that there is a little Desire Ledwith growing up down here.

I don't mean to have her cheated. I'm going to went by my name, as

she did. Don't call me Daisy any more, all of you; for I shan't

come!"

The gray eyes sparkled; the whole little face scintillated, as it

were. Desire Ledwith had a keen, charged little face; and when

something quick and strong shone through it, it was as if somewhere

behind it there had been struck fire.

She was true to that through all the years after; going to school

with Mabels and Ethels and Graces and Ediths,--not a girl she knew

but had a pretty modern name,--and they all wondering at that stiff

little "Desire" of hers that she would go by. When she was twelve

years old, the old lady up in Hanover had died, and left her a gold

watch, large and old-fashioned, which she could only keep on a stand

in her room,--a good solid silver tea-set, and all her spoons, and

twenty-five shares in the Hanover Bank.

Mrs. Megilp called her Daisy, with gentle inadvertence, one day

after that. Desire lifted her eyes slowly at her, with no other

reply in her face, or else.

"You might please your mother now, I think," said Mrs. Megilp.

"There is no old lady to be troubled by it."

"A promise isn't ever dead, Mrs. Megilp," said Desire, briefly. "I

shall keep our words."

"After all," Mrs. Megilp said privately to the mother, "there is

something quietly aristocratic in an old, plain, family name. I

don't know that it isn't good taste in the child. Everybody

understands that it was a condition, and an inheritance."

Mrs. Megilp had taken care of that. She was watchful for the small

impressions she could make in behalf of her particular friends. She

carried about with her a little social circumference in which all

was preëminently as it should be.

But,--as I would say if you could not see it for yourself--this is

a digression. We will go back again.

"If it were any use!" said Desire, shaking out the deep plaits as

she unfastened them from the band. "But you're only a piece of

everybody after all. You haven't anything really new or particular

to yourself, when you've done. And it takes up so much time. Last

year, this was so pretty! _Isn't_ anything actually pretty in

itself, or can't they settle what it is? I should think they had

been at it long enough."

"Fashions never were so graceful as they are this minute," said Mrs.

Megilp. "Of course it is art, like everything else, and progress.

The world is getting educated to a higher refinement in it, every

day. Why, it's duty, child!" she continued, exaltedly. "Think what

the world would be if nobody cared. We ought to make life beautiful.

It's meant to be. There's not only no virtue in ugliness, but almost

no virtue _with_ it, I think. People are more polite and

good-natured when they are well dressed and comfortable."

"_That's_ dress, too, though," said Desire, sententiously. "You've

got to stay at home four days, and rip, and be tired, and cross, and

tried-on-to, and have no chance to do anything else, before you can

put it all on and go out and be good-natured and bland, and help put

the beautiful face on the world, _one_ day. I don't believe it's

political economy."

"Everybody doesn't have to do it for themselves. Really, when I hear

people blamed for dress and elegance,--why, the very ones who have

the most of it are those who sacrifice the least time to it. They

just go and order what they want, and there's the end of it. When it

comes home, they put it on, and it might as well be a flounced silk

as a plain calico."

"But we _do_ have to think, Mrs. Megilp. And work and worry. And

then we _can't_ turn right round in the things we know every stitch

of and have bothered over from beginning to end, and just be lilies

of the field!"

"A great many people do have to wash their own dishes, and sweep,

and scour; but that is no reason it ought not to be done. I always

thought it was rather a pity that was said, _just so_," Mrs. Megilp

proceeded, with a mild deprecation of the Scripture. "There _is_

toiling and spinning; and will be to the end of time, for some of

us."

"There's cauliflower brought for dinner, Mrs. Ledwith," said

Christina, the parlor girl, coming in. "And Hannah says it won't go

with the pigeons. Will she put it on the ice for to-morrow?"

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Ledwith, absently, considering a breadth

that had a little hitch in it. "Though what we shall have to-morrow

I'm sure I don't know," she added, rousing up. "I wish Mr. Ledwith

wouldn't send home the first thing he sees, without any reference."

"And here's the milkman's bill, and a letter," continued Christina,

laying them down on a chair beside her mistress, and then departing.

Great things come into life so easily, when they do come, right

alongside of milk-bills and cabbages! And yet one may wait so long

sometimes for anything to happen _but_ cabbages!

The letter was in a very broad, thick envelope, and sealed with wax.

Mrs. Ledwith looked at it curiously before she opened it. She

did not receive many letters. She had very little time for

correspondence. It was addressed to "Mrs. Laura Ledwith." That

was odd and unusual, too.

Mrs. Megilp glanced at her over the tortoise-shell rims of her

eye-glasses, but sat very quiet, lest she should delay the opening.

She would like to know what could be in that very business-like

looking despatch, and Laura would be sure to tell her. It must be

something pretty positive, one way or another; it was no

common-place negative communication. Laura might have had property

left her. Mrs. Megilp always thought of possibilities like that.

When Laura Ledwith had unfolded the large commercial sheet, and

glanced down the open lines of square, upright characters, whose

purport could be taken in at sight, like print, she turned very red

with a sudden excitement. Then all the color dropped away, and there

was nothing in her face but blank, pale, intense surprise.

"It is a most _won_derful thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her

breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr.

Oldways."

She spoke those four words as if from them Mrs. Megilp could

understand everything.

Mrs. Megilp thought she did.

"Ah! Gone?" she asked, pathetically.

"Gone! No, indeed!" said Mrs. Ledwith. "He wrote the letter. He

wants me to _come_; me, and all of us,--to Boston, to live; and to

get acquainted with him."

"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, with the promptness and benignity of a

Christian apostle, "it's your duty to go."

"And he offers me a house, and two thousand dollars a year."

"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, "it is _emphatically_ your duty to go."

All at once something strange came over Laura Ledwith. She crumpled

the letter tight in her hands with a clutch of quick excitement, and

began to choke with a little sob, and to laugh at the same time.

"Don't give way!" cried Mrs. Megilp, coming to her and giving her a

little shake and a slap. "If you do once you will again, and you're

_not_ hystericky!"

"He's sent for Frank, too. Frank and I will be together again in

dear old Boston! But--we can't be children and sit on the shed any

more; and--it _isn't_ dear old Boston, either!"

And then Laura gave right up, and had a good cry for five minutes.

After that she felt better, and asked Mrs. Megilp how she thought a

house in Spiller Street would do.

But she couldn't rip any more of those breadths that morning.

Agatha and Florence came in from some calls at the Goldthwaites and

the Haddens, and the news was told, and they had their bonnets to

take off, and the dinner-bell rang, and the smell of the spicy

pigeon-stew came up the stairs, all together. And they went down,

talking fast; and one said "house," and another "carpets," and

another "music and German;" and Desire, trailing a breadth of green

silk in her hand that she had never let go since the letter was

read, cried out, "oratorios!" And nobody quite knew what they were

going down stairs for, or had presence of mind to realize the

pigeons, or help each other or themselves properly, when they got

there! Except Mrs. Megilp, who was polite and hospitable to them

all, and picked two birds in the most composed and elegant manner.

When the dessert was put upon the table, and Christina, confusedly

enlightened as to the family excitement, and excessively curious,

had gone away into the kitchen, Mrs. Ledwith said to Mrs. Megilp,--

"I'm not sure I should fancy Spiller Street, after all; it's a sort

of a corner. Westmoreland Street or Helvellyn Park might be nice. I

know people down that way,--Mrs. Inchdeepe."

"Mrs. Inchdeepe isn't exactly 'people,'" said Mrs. Megilp, in a

quiet way that implied more than grammar. "Don't get into 'And' in

Boston, Laura!--With such an addition to your income, and what your

uncle gives you toward a house, I don't see why you might not think

of Republic Avenue."

"We shall have plenty of thinking to do about everything," said

Laura.

"Mamma," said Agatha, insinuatingly, "I'm thinking, already; about

that rose-pink paper for my room. I'm glad now I didn't have it

here."

Agatha had been restless for white lace, and rose-pink, and a

Brussels carpet ever since her friend Zarah Thoole had come home

from Europe and furnished a morning-room.

All this time Mr. Grant Ledwith, quite unconscious of the impending

changes with which his family were so far advanced in imagination,

was busy among bales and samples in Devonshire Street. It got to be

an old story by the time the seven o'clock train was in, and he

reached home. It was almost as if it had all happened a year ago,

and they had been waiting for him to come home from Australia.

There was so much to explain to him that it was really hard to make

him understand, and to bring him up to the point from which they

could go on together.