The Pleasant Street Partnership.
by Mary F. Leonard.
CHAPTER FIRST
A WAVE OF IMPROVEMENT
Pleasant Street was regarded by the Terrace as merely an avenue of approach to its own exclusive precincts. That Pleasant Street came to an end at the Terrace seemed to imply that nothing was to be gained by going farther; and if you desired a quiet, substantial neighborhood,--none of your showy modern houses on meagre lots, but s.p.a.cious dwellings, standing well apart from each other on high ground,--you found it here.
It could not be denied that the Terrace was rather far down town.
Around it the busy city was closing in, with its blocks of commonplace houses, its schools and sanitariums, its noisy car lines, until it seemed but a question of a few years when it would be engulfed in a wave of mediocrity. Fashion had long ago turned her face in another direction, and yet in a way the Terrace held its own. It could boast of some wealth, and more distinguished grandfathers were to be heard of within its small area than in the length and breadth of Dean Avenue.
Its residents felt for each other that friendliness born of long a.s.sociation. Some of the best people of the town had built their homes here between thirty and forty years ago, and a comparison of directories would have shown a surprising proportion of the old names still represented.
Perhaps no one thing contributes more to a sense of dignity than long residence in one house, and it was natural enough that the Terrace should shrug its shoulders at the row of toy dwellings that sprang up almost magically on Pleasant Street. That this thoroughfare, so long given over to side yards and vacant lots, was showing a disposition to improve, was a matter of no concern to the Terrace until unexpectedly its own territory was invaded.
On the northeast corner of the Terrace and Pleasant Street there had long stood a cottage. In the midst of a large lot, with fine shade-trees around it and a beautifully kept lawn, it had never seemed out of place among its more pretentious neighbors; but now upon the death of its owner the property was divided into three lots and offered for sale. What this might mean was at first hardly realized, until one day men were discovered to be at work on the corner, digging a foundation.
Upon inquiry it developed that a drug store was to be built. The neighborhood did not like this, but felt on the whole it might have been worse,--this conclusion, as Wayland Leigh pointed out later on, being founded on the mistaken hypothesis that all drug stores are pretty much alike.
It happened that the druggist had for a brother a young and aspiring architect, who conceived the idea of putting up a building in keeping with a residence district. The result was a sloping-roofed structure whose shingled second story projected over the first, which was of concrete. It might have been a rural station, or post-office, or a seaside cottage, but a drug store it did not remotely suggest.
The store opened on Pleasant Street; to reach the private entrance you must go in from the Terrace, where there was a square of lawn and a maple tree, relic of better days.
The worst of it was its utter incongruousness, the best--so Alexina Russell said--that it invariably made you smile, and anything in this weary world that caused a smile was not wholly bad. Miss Sarah Leigh pretended to admire it, and declared she wanted to meet the architect.
Of all things she liked originality. Mrs. Millard heard her disdainfully. Any departure from tradition was objectionable in her eyes, and she was deficient in a sense of humor. Judge Russell complained that now St. Mark"s had taken to high-church customs, and the Terrace was degenerating, it was time for him to be put away in Spring Hill Cemetery.
Pretty Madelaine, his granddaughter, looked longingly toward Dean Avenue, being divided between a desire for its new splendors and a complacent consciousness that it was something of a distinction in these days to live in the house where your father was born. Alexina, her sister, treated this with scorn. She loved the shabby old house for other reasons.
In spite of the original intentions of the builder, fate decreed that this much-talked-of place was not to be a drug store after all, and early in the summer, before it was finished, it was advertised for rent.
The plastering stage was beginning when the agent in charge one day appeared conducting a young woman over the premises. If the agent"s manner revealed some slight curiosity concerning her, it was not to be wondered at, for it was more than probable he had never before seen so charming a person in the guise of a possible shopkeeper.
Her bearing was dignified and businesslike, and if a smile hovered about her lips as they explored the odd little house, it did not go beyond the bounds of a polite interest. At length she seated herself on an empty nail keg in the shop, and became absorbed in thought. The agent leaned against the door frame and waited.
"I shall want a few changes made if I lease it," she announced suddenly, after some minutes of silence.
The agent started as her eyes met his. "Oh, certainly," he replied, as if ready to agree without hearing what they were. On second thought he added that the architect was at that moment coming up the street, and the best plan, perhaps, would be to submit her wishes to him.
To this she graciously a.s.sented, and he left her. When he was gone, the young woman"s dignity relaxed. She smiled broadly; she even laughed. "How ever did it happen!" she exclaimed.
She produced a tape-line and made measurements, then she stood with the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. "I do wish Marion could see it," she said. "She will never believe what a fascinatingly funny place it is."
She was surveying the neighborhood from the front door when the agent returned, accompanied by the architect.
She wanted very little, she announced rea.s.suringly; a fireplace in the shop was the chief thing.
The agent suggested that it would be far more expensive to heat the room with an open grate than with an anthracite base burner. Whereupon she explained that an open fire was part of her stock in trade, and it would be impossible to carry on her line of business without one.
The agent ventured to inquire what her line was, and she answered with a twinkle in her eye, "Notions."
The architect was doubtful about the fireplace, but not unwilling to discuss it, and they grew so friendly over the matter that the agent retired to the door and stared gloomily up the street.
From the fireplace the discussion turned to other things. As a possible tenant, the young lady consulted the architect about the best color for the walls, so adroitly insinuating her own ideas as to the proper stain for the woodwork that they seemed his own.
While they talked, a small boy in a gingham ap.r.o.n, with a sailor hat on the back of his curly head and a gray flannel donkey under his arm, wandered in and stood surveying them with great composure.
"Who"s going to live here?" he presently asked, his brown eyes upon the lady.
She met his gaze with a smile that drew him a step nearer, but caused no break in his seriousness. "I am thinking of it," she said, adding, with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes, "if they will let me have a fireplace in this room. Shouldn"t you want a fireplace if you were going to live here?"
He nodded, ""Cause if you didn"t, Santa Claus couldn"t come."
The lady turned gravely to the architect. "That is a consideration which had not occurred to me, but it is an important one. I shall not take it without the fireplace." Her manner said there was no need for further discussion.
"What is your name?" she asked the small boy.
He shook his head.
"Do you mean you haven"t any?"
Another more vigorous shake.
"Perhaps you have forgotten it?"
"No, I haven"t."
"Why not tell, then? I am always willing to tell mine."
"What is it?" he inquired with great promptness.
"But I don"t think it is fair to ask me when you won"t tell yours."
"You said you would."
The lady laughed. "Very well, I am Miss Pennington."
The small boy pondered this for a moment, then announced with much distinctness, "My name is James Mandeville Norton."
"Well, James, I am glad to meet you. I see you are a fair-minded person. Do you live in this neighborhood?"
James Mandeville pointed in the direction of the row of toy houses on Pleasant Street, and said he lived over there.
"Then if they give me a fireplace, you and I will be neighbors."
They were standing in the door, just outside which, on the sidewalk, was a velocipede. This James Mandeville now mounted with gravity. He did not express a hope that she might come to live near him, but there was friendliness in the tone in which he said good-by as he rode away.