That was the only trouble with Allan Carey's little daughter Julia, aged
thirteen; she was, and always had been, the pink of perfection. As a
baby she had always been exemplary, eating heartily and sleeping
soundly. When she felt a pin in her flannel petticoat she deemed it
discourteous to cry, because she knew that her nurse had at least tried
to dress her properly. When awake, her mental machinery moved slowly and
without any jerks. As to her moral machinery, the angels must have set
it going at birth and planned it in such a way that it could neither
stop nor go wrong. It was well meant, of course, but probably the angels
who had the matter in charge were new, young, inexperienced angels, with
vague ideas of human nature and inexact knowledge of God's intentions;
because a child that has no capability of doing the wrong thing will
hardly be able to manage a right one; not one of the big sort, anyway.
At four or five years old Julia was always spoken of as "such a good
little girl." Many a time had Nancy in early youth stamped her foot and
cried: "Don't talk about Julia! I will not hear about Julia!" for she
was always held up as a pattern of excellence. Truth to tell she bored
her own mother terribly; but that is not strange, for by a curious freak
of nature, Mrs. Allan Carey was as flighty and capricious and
irresponsible and gay and naughty as Julia was steady, limited, narrow,
conventional, and dull; but the flighty mother passed out of the Carey
family life, and Julia, from the age of five onward, fell into the
charge of a pious, unimaginative governess, instead of being turned out
to pasture with a lot of frolicsome young human creatures; so at
thirteen she had apparently settled--hard, solid, and firm--into a
mould. She had smooth fair hair, pale blue eyes, thin lips, and a
somewhat too plump shape for her years. She was always tidy and wore her
clothes well, laying enormous stress upon their material and style, this
trait in her character having been added under the fostering influence
of the wealthy and fashionable Gladys Ferguson. At thirteen, when Julia
joined the flock of Carey chickens, she had the air of belonging to
quite another order of beings. They had been through a discipline seldom
suffered by "only children." They had had to divide apples and toys,
take turns at reading books, and learn generally to trot in double
harness. If Nancy had a new dress at Christmas, Kathleen had a new hat
in the spring. Gilbert heard the cry of "Low bridge!" very often after
Kathleen appeared on the scene, and Kathleen's ears, too, grew well
accustomed to the same phrase after Peter was born.
"Julia never did a naughty thing in her life, nor spoke a wrong word,"
said her father once, proudly.
"Never mind, she's only ten, and there's hope for her yet," Captain
Carey had replied cheerfully; though if he had known her a little later,
in her first Beulah days, he might not have been so sanguine. She seemed
to have no instinct of adapting herself to the family life, standing
just a little aloof and in an attitude of silent criticism. She was a
trig, smug prig, Nancy said, delighting in her accidental muster of
three short, hard, descriptive words. She hadn't a bit of humor, no fun,
no gayety, no generous enthusiasms that carried her too far for safety
or propriety. She brought with her to Beulah sheaves of school
certificates, and when she showed them to Gilbert with their hundred per
cent deportment and ninety-eight and seven-eighths per cent scholarship
every month for years, he went out behind the barn and kicked its
foundations savagely for several minutes. She was a sort of continual
Sunday child, with an air of church and cold dinner and sermon-reading
and hymn-singing and early bed. Nobody could fear, as for some
impulsive, reckless little creature, that she would come to a bad end.
Nancy said no one could imagine her as coming to anything, not even
an end!
"You never let mother hear you say these things, Nancy," Kathleen
remarked once, "but really and truly it's just as bad to say them at
all, when you know she wouldn't approve."
"My present object is to be as good as gold in mother's eyes, but there
I stop!" retorted Nancy cheerfully. "Pretty soon I shall get virtuous
enough to go a step further and endeavor to please the angels,--not
Julia's cast-iron angels, but the other angels, who understand and are
patient, because they remember our frames and know that being dust we
are likely to be dusty once in a while. Julia wasn't made of dust. She
was made of--let me see--of skim milk and baked custard (the watery
kind) and rice flour and gelatine, with a very little piece of overripe
banana,--not enough to flavor, just enough to sicken. Stir this up with
weak barley water without putting in a trace of salt, sugar, spice, or
pepper, set it in a cool oven, take it out before it is done, and you
will get Julia."
Nancy was triumphant over this recipe for making Julias, only regretting
that she could never show it to her mother, who, if critical, was always
most appreciative. She did send it in a letter to the Admiral, off in
China, and he, being "none too good for human nature's daily food,"
enjoyed it hugely and never scolded her at all.
Julia's only conversation at this time was on matters concerning Gladys
Ferguson and the Ferguson family. When you are washing dishes in the
sink of the Yellow House in Beulah it is very irritating to hear of
Gladys Ferguson's mother-of-pearl opera glasses, her French maid, her
breakfast on a tray in bed, her diamond ring, her photograph in the
Sunday "Times," her travels abroad, her proficiency in French
and German.
"Don't trot Gladys into the kitchen, for goodness' sake, Julia!"
grumbled Nancy on a warm day. "I don't want her diamond ring in my
dishwater. Wait till Sunday, when we go to the hotel for dinner in our
best clothes, if you must talk about her. You don't wipe the tumblers
dry, nor put them in the proper place, when your mind is full
of Gladys!"
"All right!" said Julia gently. "Only I hope I shall always be able to
wipe dishes and keep my mind on better things at the same time. That's
what Miss Tewksbury told me when she knew I had got to give up my home
luxuries for a long time. 'Don't let poverty drag you down, Julia,' she
said: 'keep your high thoughts and don't let them get soiled with the
grime of daily living.'"
It is only just to say that Nancy was not absolutely destitute of
self-control and politeness, because at this moment she had a really
vicious desire to wash Julia's supercilious face and neat nose with the
dishcloth, fresh from the frying pan. She knew that she could not grasp
those irritating "high thoughts" and apply the grime of daily living to
them concretely and actually, but Julia's face was within her reach, and
Nancy's fingers tingled with desire. No trace of this savage impulse
appeared in her behavior, however; she rinsed the dishpan, turned it
upside down in the sink, and gave the wiping towels to Julia, asking her
to wring them out in hot water and hang them on the barberry bushes,
according to Mrs. Carey's instructions.
"It doesn't seem as if I could!" whimpered Julia. "I have always been so
sensitive, and dish towels are so disgusting! They do _smell_, Nancy!"
"They do," said Nancy sternly, "but they will smell worse if they are
not washed! I give you the dish-wiping and take the washing, just to
save your hands, but you must turn and turn about with Kathleen and me
with some of the ugly, hateful things. If you were company of course we
couldn't let you, but you are a member of the family. Our principal
concern must be to keep mother's 'high thoughts' from grime; ours must
just take their chance!"
Oh! how Julia disliked Nancy at this epoch in their common history; and
how cordially and vigorously the dislike was returned! Many an unhappy
moment did Mother Carey have over the feud, mostly deep and silent, that
went on between these two; and Gilbert's attitude was not much more
hopeful. He had found a timetable or syllabus for the day's doings, over
Julia's washstand. It had been framed under Miss Tewksbury's guidance,
who knew Julia's unpunctuality and lack of system, and read as
follows:--
_Syllabus_
Rise at 6.45.
Bathe and dress.
Devotional Exercises 7.15.
Breakfast 7.45.
Household tasks till 9.
Exercise out of doors 9 to 10.
Study 10 to 12.
Preparations for dinner 12 to 1.
Recreation 2 to 4.
Study 4 to 5.
Preparation for supper 5 to 6.
Wholesome reading, walking, or conversation 7 to 8.
Devotional exercises 9.
Bed 9.30.
There was nothing wrong about this; indeed, it was excellently
conceived; still it appeared to Gilbert as excessively funny, and with
Nancy's help he wrote another syllabus and tacked it over
Julia's bureau.
_Time Card_
On waking I can
Pray for Gilly and Nan;
Eat breakfast at seven.
Or ten or eleven,
Nor think when it's noon
That luncheon's too soon.
From twelve until one
I can munch on a bun.
At one or at two
My dinner'll be due.
At three, say, or four,
I'll eat a bit more.
When the clock's striking five
Some mild exercise,
Very brief, would be wise,
Lest I lack appetite
For my supper at night.
Don't go to bed late,
Eat a light lunch at eight,
Nor forget to say prayers
For my cousins downstairs.
Then with conscience like mine
I'll be sleeping at nine.
Mrs. Carey had a sense of humor, and when the weeping Julia brought the
two documents to her for consideration she had great difficulty in
adjusting the matter gravely and with due sympathy for her niece.
"The F-f-f-fergusons never mentioned my appetite," Julia wailed. "They
were always trying to g-g-get me to eat!"
"Gilbert and Nancy are a little too fond of fun, and a little too prone
to chaffing," said Mrs. Carey. "They forget that you are not used to it,
but I will try to make them more considerate. And don't forget, my dear,
that in a large family like ours we must learn to 'live and let live.'"