MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE
Molly Granger had not left Number Eighty-one when the maid knocked at
her chum’s door with Mrs. Severn’s card and the message. Beth was not
only surprised, but uncertain as to what she should do.
“What is it?” whispered Molly, very curious. “A visitor?”
“Who is Mrs. Ricardo Severn?”
“Oh! I know who she is,” cried Molly. “Such fun! Doesn’t she want you
to come down to the carriage?”
“No. To go to her house, so the footman said,” explained the maid.
“Mrs. Severn isn’t in the carriage.”
“But who is she?” repeated Beth Baldwin.
“Just the oddest person you ever saw,” Molly cried. “You _must_ go,
Beth.”
“But, why?”
“She’s got something for you to do, of course,” Molly said. “And depend
upon it, it will be work that pays well. They say Mrs. Severn’s house
is just crowded with beautiful things. She’s heard of you through Mrs.
Pepper--you know, the woman who brought you the baby’s lace dress to
mend that the puppy tried to eat up.”
“Query: Did the puppy try to eat up the dress, the baby, or Mrs.
Pepper?” demanded Beth, solemnly.
“Never mind splitting scholastic hairs,” cried Molly. “You must go!”
and she hurried Beth into her coat and tam-o-shanter.
When Beth saw the old-fashioned carriage, she laughed to herself. It
was queer. But she noted that the upholstering of the carriage was very
elegant, indeed, and that the vehicle swung on behind the fat horses in
a very easy fashion.
She was solemnly deposited at the big stone house on the Boulevard
within a short space of time. The big footman presented her at the
front door where a second footman, in still more gorgeous livery,
passed her into the house and up the first flight of stairs.
Here a maid received Beth, looked her over carefully as though she
feared the girl might have dynamite concealed about her person, and
doubtfully announced her as “Miz Baldwig.”
The great room into which Beth was ushered--really a suite of rooms
which had been thrown into one vast apartment--tapered away from a
first appearance of dim grandeur to a sunny point, where sat a huge old
woman, in a huge morris chair, with her gouty feet in huge slippers on
a stool, while a green and red parrot, hanging upside down from its
perch, was in a big gilded cage in the bow window.
Mrs. Severn was a broad-faced woman, with several small wens on her
cheeks, who would have been very coarse-featured, indeed, had it not
been for the cheerful smile with which she welcomed Beth.
But she could welcome her in no other way at first, for as the girl
marched down the long room the parrot, still upside down, sang out:
“Here comes the bride!” and then, in the shrillest possible whistle,
and much out of tune, vented the Bridal March in a most deafening
fashion.
Beth could see that its mistress was trying to quiet the parrot. She
could see Mrs. Severn’s lips move, and a frown came upon her brow,
above which both her “false front” and her cap were awry.
Finally, losing all patience, she seized a handy cushion and flung it
with evidently practised hand at the parrot’s cage. The bird broke off
short in his whistling.
“Drat you, Mr. Montague! Shut up!” cried Mrs. Severn.
“Shut up yourself--and see how _you_ like it,” croaked the parrot; but
he desisted after that and his mistress and Beth could talk.
“Mercy!” was the lady’s first comment as Beth stood before her. “You
are only a child!”
“But grown-up folks are not taught at Rivercliff School, Mrs. Severn,”
Beth returned, with a smile.
“I suppose that is so,” agreed Mrs. Severn, laughing. “But they say you
are quite wonderful at mending.”
“Oh, no,” Beth replied. “Only painstaking.”
“Why! I guess that must be wonderful in this day and generation,” and
the lady smiled one of her rare smiles again. “How pretty you are,
child.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Severn.”
“I had much your style of looks and figure when I was your age, my
dear,” said Mrs. Severn, complacently.
Beth trembled. Then she remembered that, by no possibility, was there
any blood relationship between her and Mrs. Severn, so there was
hope that she might not, in the end, acquire the good lady’s present
personal appearance.
“I did not know that any of the students of Rivercliff had gumption
enough to do anything useful,” went on Mrs. Severn, nodding her head.
“Take a seat, my dear. Don’t come too near my gouty foot. Gout runs in
our family--and we date back to William the Conqueror.”
“Oh! the noble Duke of York--he had ten thousand men!” began the
parrot, as though feeling that something was expected of him to
substantiate his mistress’ appeal to ancient history.
“Shut up, Mr. Montague!” commanded Mrs. Severn. Then to Beth: “He is a
dreadfully saucy bird. His full name is Mr. Dennis Montague----”
“Dennis Mudd! Dennis Mudd!” shrieked the parrot.
“There! that wicked nephew of mine taught him that. Roland Severn
has no regard for the dignity of our family name and history, and
Montague----”
“Piffle!” growled the parrot, still swinging upside down.
Secretly, Beth thought the parrot and the nephew were probably both
right. But she, nevertheless, liked Mrs. Severn. The lady proceeded to
show Beth that she approved of her at once.
“Now, I want your time each Saturday afternoon--oh, for some weeks.
Until the end of this term, at least,” said the lady. “I have a number
of table-throws and bureau scarfs and the like, made in the Irish
convents, and the carelessness of my maid in putting them aside and
having them laundered by people who did not know their business, has
almost ruined some of the pieces. It is very particular work.”
“Perhaps I cannot suit you on such fine work, Mrs. Severn,” said Beth.
“But I will try, if you like.”
“That is the right answer,” declared Mrs. Severn, gaily. “From what
Mrs. Pepper showed me I know you will suit.”
“Thank you.”
“And you will give me each Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes--until supper time. We have to report at that hour unless we have
a special permit from Miss Hammersly.”
“Very strict, is she?” asked Mrs. Severn.
“Oh, yes. She has to be, with two hundred girls under her care.”
“Quite so. Well, under that cloth you will find some of the articles to
be repaired. Look at them and tell me what you think?”
“Oh, but I have nothing with me to work with,” said Beth. “You see, I
did not know what was wanted of me.”
“Of course not. That makes no difference. I have you for the afternoon.
Is two dollars for each afternoon you come, too little, my dear?”
“I should make more than that in my room, Mrs. Severn,” said Beth,
quietly. “I am a rapid worker, and the girls bring me a great deal of
their mending to do. I should be glad to come to you each Saturday from
half-past one till half-past five for three dollars. I could not do it
for less.”
“My! that seems a lot for a child to charge,” murmured the lady.
“You can try me one afternoon if you like, and decide yourself if
my work--and the amount I do--is satisfactory,” the girl said, with
dignity.
“Well,” chuckled the lady, suddenly, “I suppose I want your company as
much as I want anything. You can talk while you work, can’t you?”
“Oh yes!” laughed Beth, her face brightening. “Conversation will not be
charged for extra.”
Mrs. Severn laughed. Immediately Mr. Dennis Montague began to cackle,
and went into a veritable spasm of laughter which drowned all other
sounds for the nonce. The parrot was a jealous bird. He cared only to
hear his own voice. Again he was quenched (for the moment) by a cushion
and the undignified command to “shut up!”
Beth saw that Mrs. Severn’s hands and fingers were swollen with
the gout, too--called by more plebian patients, “rheumatism.” Beth
wondered if she was ever able to get the several costly rings which
were imbedded in the flesh off those swollen fingers. Mrs. Severn wore,
too, an old-fashioned “sunburst” of considerable value.
“Now, don’t go,” said the lady, when Beth rose, considering the bargain
completed. “You begin your work here to-day.”
“But really, Mrs. Severn, I have nothing with me to work with. And I do
not suppose you have the proper thread?”
“Never mind that!” exclaimed the lady. “You can talk without a needle
and thread in your fingers?”
Beth laughed. “Oh yes. But three dollars for just talking would be
rather an overcharge, wouldn’t it? And I cannot afford to give my time.”
“You are not supposed to,” said Mrs. Severn. “I admire you for knowing
your own mind and sticking to it. I shall pay for your time this
afternoon just the same if you do not work. Tell me, Miss Baldwin, why
do you have to do this sort of thing? For I suppose you have to. No
person of your age would rather work than play.”
“Oh no,” said Beth, hesitating to take the lady into her complete
confidence on such brief acquaintance. “I do not do it from choice.”
“Until Mrs. Pepper told me, I had no idea that one of the girls at
Rivercliff ever did anything useful.”
“Oh, Mrs. Severn! that is hard. We are all learning.”
“Oh yes. They stuffed me when I was young with a lot of nonsense at
school. But if the chief end of a girl’s existence is to get married,
what good do books do her?”
“Why, that isn’t the chief end of girls of to-day, Mrs. Severn,”
laughed Beth. “At least, not of the girls I know.”
“You do not know many of your fellow-students very well, do you?” asked
Mrs. Severn, shrewdly. “I know that class of young ladies pretty well.
They haven’t, as a rule, a practical idea once in a year. But you are
evidently different.”
“I am different in that my people are not well-to-do,” confessed Beth.
“I had money enough to get through one year at Rivercliff. I hoped to
earn enough to pay for two more years. That is why I began mending for
the other girls.”
“And don’t you expect to accomplish your purpose?” asked the interested
lady.
“It does not look so now,” said Beth, sadly. “My father has been taken
ill. His income has stopped. Had my school fees not been paid until the
end of the term I should have gone home at once. But I am earning all I
can to take home in June with me and try to repay the folks for some
of the money they have spent on me.”
Beth then turned the current of the conversation skilfully and got off
the subject of herself and her poverty. Mrs. Severn was really an idle
woman who craved amusement. She had little within herself to occupy her
mind, and had never learned to occupy her hands.
Beth extracted some enjoyment out of the afternoon, however; but when
she went the parrot screamed after her: “I don’t care if you _never_
come back!”
She thought, too, that the foreign maid looked at her with a frown
as she watched her through the hall and down the stairs. There were
evidently two jealous individuals in the great stone house that did not
care to see the mistress of it become interested in a stranger.