THE NEW READER
The Queen of Farrandale had long passed the time for waiting patiently
for anything she wished for, so it was the very next day that Millicent
Duane came to the big house for a trial reading.
She gave such perfect satisfaction that it was scarcely five minutes
after she began that a delicate snore began to proceed from Miss
Frink’s slender nose. Millicent regarded the recumbent figure in some
embarrassment, and stopped reading.
Miss Frink’s eyes opened at once. “Well, well, child, what are you
waiting for?” she asked testily. “Got a big word?”
Millicent, crimsoning to the tips of her ears, began again to read. She
was afraid to stop, although the snoring began again almost immediately,
and read on and on in the novel of the day. Although Miss Frink was a
lady of the old school, she proposed to know what was going on in the
world at the present time, and she always bought the book which received
the best reviews, though Millicent came to wonder how she made anything
of it in the hashed condition in which it penetrated her consciousness.
At last, when the lady was positively fast asleep, Millicent closed the
book, took her hat and wrap in her hand, and went noiselessly out into
the hall and down the stairs.
Mrs. Lumbard met her at the foot, and the young girl accosted her.
“This is Mrs. Lumbard, isn’t it?” she said shyly. “I am Millicent Duane.
Miss Frink didn’t tell me what to do if she went to sleep.”
“You guessed right,” returned the other. “There is nothing to do but
leave her until she has her nap out. You have evidently qualified.” Mrs.
Lumbard laughed; it was not a pleasant laugh Millicent thought. “I tried
to read to her, but she wouldn’t have me. Won’t you sit down a minute, or
are you too busy?”
Millicent hesitated, but seated herself near the other in the spacious
hall with its broad fireplace. “I am not busy at all,” she said, “and it
seems so strange after being a whole year in the store.”
“I suppose you mean the Ross-Graham establishment. That is _the_ store in
Farrandale, is it not?”
“Yes, indeed, and I suppose it is the finest one anywhere,” returned
Millicent seriously.
Adèle gazed upon her earnest face with its youthful color and nimbus of
blonde hair.
“Have you known Miss Frink long?”
“Oh, we all know her by sight, but I never spoke to her until yesterday
when she came in to buy a dressing-gown, and I happened that day to have
been put on the dressing-gowns. Wasn’t I lucky?—for this came of it.”
Millicent’s happy smile revealed a dimple. Mrs. Lumbard’s eyes
scrutinized her.
“I’ll warrant she bought a handsome one,” she said.
“Oh, gorgeous. The handsomest one we had. I told her it was fit for
Prince Charming.” The young girl gave a little laugh.
“Well, one would do that for the man who had saved one’s life,” remarked
Adèle.
The guest’s lips formed a round O. “Does he still live here?” she asked,
“and is he getting well?”
Mrs. Lumbard shrugged her shoulders. “I hear so, but I’ve never seen him.”
Millicent looked about her in some awe. “I suppose in such a great place
as this, people might not meet for days. Grandfather and I live in a
little cubby-house”—the admiring eyes came back to Mrs. Lumbard’s brown,
curious stare—“but it has a big yard and we love it.”
The older woman leaned back and shrugged her shoulders again. At this
juncture Miss Frink appeared on the stairs.
Millicent saw her, and, springing up, met her where the brass jardinières
filled with ferns grew at the foot of the wide descent.
“I didn’t know what to do about leaving, Miss Frink. I saw you were
resting so well.”
The hostess, with a sharp glance at Adèle’s luxurious posture, laid a
kind hand on the girl’s shoulder as she returned the sweet, eager look.
“You did quite right,” she replied. “Leave me when you see I am dead to
the world, and then—you may go right home.”
“Right home,” repeated the girl, a little falteringly.
“Yes,” said Miss Frink pleasantly. “When you leave me, go right home. You
read well.”
“Thank you,” said Millicent. “I hadn’t thought to ask you.
Good-afternoon, Miss Frink. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Lumbard.”
Her cheeks were hot as she hurried into her hat and jacket and out the
door. When she reached home, her heart was still quickening with a vague
sense of having done wrong. The pretty white-haired lady’s eyes and
laugh were curious and cold. Miss Frink had been displeased that she had
stayed and talked with her. Perhaps she ought not to have told about the
dressing-gown.
Old Colonel Duane was bending his white head and smooth-shaven face over
the little green sprouts in a garden plot when his granddaughter flung
open the gate and rushed to him.
He raised himself slowly and looked around at her flushed cheeks. She
pushed her hand through his arm and clutched it.
“Well, how did you get along, Milly? Does it beat fitting on gloves?”
“I’m so mortified, Grandpa,” was the rather breathless reply. “I had to
be sent home.”
“Oh, come, now! You can stay home if that’s the case. Is Miss Frink an
old pepper-pot as folks say?”
“No, no; she was kind to me, and I read her to sleep, which is what she
wants; but I wasn’t sure what to do then, so when I met Mrs. Lumbard in
the reception hall downstairs she asked me to sit down and I did. You
remember my telling you about the white-haired lady who looks like a
beauty of the French Court with big brown eyes? Well—there’s something
queer—I don’t like her—and you know the Prince Charming dressing-gown I
told you Miss Frink bought of me? Well, I told Mrs. Lumbard about it and
she hadn’t known it.” Big tears began to form and run down the girl’s
cheeks. “You know how we tell each other everything and show each other
everything? Well, _they_ don’t, for she didn’t know it, and she said it
was for that man who stopped the runaway, and he’s still there and she
has never seen him, and—and Miss Frink suddenly came downstairs, and said
hereafter I was to go right home when I left her. Oh”—Millicent raised
her handkerchief to her burning cheek—“very pleasantly she said it, but
what will she think when she hears that I told about the dressing-gown?
She’ll think I’m a common gossipy girl.” The tears flowed fast. “It’s
worse than Damaris bobbing her hair. Perhaps I’ll get word to-morrow
morning not to come, and I’ve given up Ross Graham’s—” The speaker’s
voice encountered a large obstruction in her throat and stopped suddenly,
while she mopped her eyes.
Her grandfather patted the hand clutching his arm and gave a comforting
little laugh.
“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, child. I judge Miss Frink
doesn’t care much for the French beauty. She didn’t like finding you
together.”
“Do you think it might be that? Why, she is her niece.”
“Yes, but I’ve heard of such phenomena as lack of devotion between aunt
and—grand-niece, isn’t it?”
“Yes—I believe so, but how funny that you know, Grandpa!” Millicent
sniffed and mopped.
“What I don’t know about what goes on in Farrandale has never been known
by anybody. I’m an easy mark for every one who has anything to tell.
Always doddering around the house or the estate,” waving his hand about
the fifty feet of yard, “if people can’t find anybody else to unburden
themselves to, there is always old Silas Duane.”
“You’re so charming, Grandpa,” exclaimed the girl, clasping his arm
tighter than before and trying to check her tears, “that’s why they come;
and if you told _me_ everything you hear, I shouldn’t be such a greenie
and lose my job.”
“You won’t lose your job. You succeeded, and that’s what Miss Frink
wants. No failures need apply.”
“But, Grandpa”—Millicent swallowed a sob—“did you know that the man, the
hero, was still at Miss Frink’s?”
“Surely I did. Leonard Grimshaw was here day before yesterday. He has
troubles of his own.” Colonel Duane laughed.
“Does Mr. Grimshaw confide in you?” Millicent asked it with some awe.
“Now I know that you don’t tell me _anything_.”
“Yes, so long as I always have the rent ready, Grimshaw is quite
talkative. This Mr. Stanwood is somewhat of a thorn in his flesh
evidently. He says it is because a sick person in the house upsets
everything, and it is a nervous strain on Miss Frink; but I imagine her
personal interest in the young man is a little disturbing.”
“Is he a young man?”
“Yes; according to Grimshaw a young nobody from nowhere, who was on his
way to look for a job at Ross Graham’s.”
Millicent’s pretty eyes, apparently none the worse for their salt bath,
looked reflective. “He may have _been_ a nobody, but any one who Miss
Frink believes saved her life becomes somebody right away.” The girl
paused. “I see now why she seemed pleased to have me say it was fit for
Prince Charming. Oh, that hateful old dressing-gown! If only Mrs. Lumbard
didn’t say anything to Miss Frink about it after I came away! Grandpa, I
can’t bear to do that the first thing.”
The girl buried her eyes against the arm she was holding. “Miss Frink
doesn’t know that I didn’t know she had a young man in her house, and I
calling him Prince Charming. Mrs. Lumbard has never seen him. Miss Frink
doesn’t know that I have a grandfather who never tells me anything when I
tell him every thing.”
Colonel Duane smiled and patted her. “Just go on telling me everything,
and don’t tell it to anybody else. You laugh at me when you catch me
talking to myself; but I’m like that man who had the same habit, and said
he did it because he liked to talk to a sensible man, and liked to hear a
sensible man talk.”
Then, as Millicent did not lift her head, he went on. “I’ll give you
another quotation: a comforting one. It was our own Mr. Emerson who said:
‘Don’t talk. What you are thunders so loud above what you say, that I
can’t hear you.’ Now, Miss Frink is, I suppose, as shrewd a woman as ever
lived; and something that you _are_ has thundered so loud above all that
dressing-gown business that you needn’t lose any sleep to-night or quake
in your little shoes to-morrow when you go back to her.”
Millicent breathed a long sigh and straightened up.
“Then I think I’ll go in and make a salad for supper,” she replied. “It’s
such fun to have time—and it—it seems so ungrateful—”
“Tut-tut,” warned her grandfather; and just then Damaris came in at the
gate.
“I heard you began reading to her to-day,” she said eagerly and without
preface. “You look sort of pale. Did she scare you to death?”
“No. She went right to sleep. How could you hear about it, Damaris? I was
coming to tell you.”
“Dr. Morton had to come to see Mother, and he told us. He told us all
about that Mr. Stanwood, too. He’s nearly well. Dr. Morton says he’s so
handsome all the girls in town will mob him; and there you will be right
on the inside. Some people’s luck!”
“Oh, don’t—I don’t want to see him,” said Millicent, so genuinely aghast
that the girl with the bobbed hair laughed.
“Why, perhaps you’ll see that dressing-gown. He must have been the one
she was buying it for.”
“Damaris, did I tell you about that dressing-gown?” The girl’s tone was
tragic.
“Why, of course—you were telling me only last night the way you met Miss
Frink.”
Millicent caught her breath. “Never speak of it again, Damaris.”
“How exciting!” The flapper’s eyes sparkled. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Millicent’s usual serenity had entirely
vanished. “It’s dangerous to have to do with powerful people, that’s all.
I was so safe in the glove section and my customers liked me”—another sob
caught in the speaker’s throat. “Everything is your fault, Grandpa, if
your eyes hadn’t been injured in the Cuban War I shouldn’t have begun to
read aloud when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and I shouldn’t read so
well—and you never tell me anything, and—Damaris, I lay awake last night
thinking that if I did leave the gloves, you ought to have my place. What
could we do with your hair!”
Damaris shook it ruefully.
“Let’s go in the house and see what we can do with ribbons and an
invisible net—and I’ll ask Miss Frink—if I ever see her again.”