"That is very good," said Father Davy in his pleasant voice; "and very opportune. It was but yesterday, it seems to me, that I heard daughter declaring that she was "Oh, so shabby!""
"Yes, yes--but what do you wager there is there?" questioned Georgiana.
"I can tell you before I take the cover off. Three evening gowns, frivolous and impossible for a little town like this; one draggled lingerie frock, two evening coats, and possibly--just possibly--a last year"s tailored suit, with a tear in the front of the skirt and not a sc.r.a.p of goods to make a fold to cover it. Why, oh, why, do they never have any pieces?"
"The reason seems obvious enough," Mr. Warne suggested, as the girl stooped and began to wrestle with the cords which tied the big package.
His glance fell musingly on the down-bent head with its ma.s.ses of dark-brown hair, upon the white and shapely arms from which the sleeves were rolled back,--Georgiana had been busy in the kitchen when the expressman came,--upon the whole comely young figure in its blue-print morning dress. "They never have need of the pieces, I should judge,"
said he.
"But I have. Jeannette might think of me when she orders her clothes, not just when her maid is packing the box with a lot of castaways. Well, here"s hoping there"s just one thing I can use," and she lifted the cover of the box and looked within, it cannot be denied, with eager curiosity.
"There are always many things you can use," her father gently reminded her; "you, who are so ingenious."
"Here"s the evening frock!" cried his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn"t it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here"s something a shade better! A little dancing frock of rose-coloured chiffon--and her clumsy partner stepped on the hem of it.
The maid in the dressing-room sewed it up for her to have her last dance in, and then she came home and threw it into the box for me. Well, I can get a gorgeous motor veil out of it--I who have so many drives in the cars of the rich!"
"The--the under part looks available to me," suggested Mr. Warne, striving to be of comfort.
Georgiana shrugged her blue-clad shoulders. "Oh, yes, if I could dress in slitted silk petticoats and you could wear them for dressing-gowns, we"d have plenty. Well, look at _this_! Here"s a velvet--cerise! What a glorious, impossible colour! And here"s the lingerie frock; that"s not so bad; I really think it will stand a couple of launderings before it falls to pieces in my hands. And here"s the evening coat--pale gray with fox tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--and she"s fallen foul of some ink or something, and the cleaner couldn"t get it all out. Father Davy, look!"
"It seems to me," said Mr. Warne in his gentle tones, which were yet not without more firmness than one might expect from so frail a person, "that I have heard somewhere a homely proverb to the effect that it is not quite in good taste to----"
""_Look a gift horse in the mouth,_"" finished Georgiana. Her eyes were rebellious. "And there"s another: "_Beggars mustn"t be choosers._" Yes, I know. Only, semi-annually I certainly do experience a burning wish that my dear rich relations were persons with a trifle keener sense of discernment as to which of their old clothes would be most appreciated by their poor cousins. They must now and then, Father Davy, wear something sensible. They must have morning clothes and street clothes--adorable ones. Why do they send only the worldly clothes to the manse? And why--_why_ do they never put in so much as one of Uncle Thomas"s discarded cravats for the Little Minister himself?"
"Your Uncle Thomas and I may possibly have different tastes in the matter of neckwear," replied Mr. Warne with such gravity of manner but such a sparkle of humour in his blue-gray eyes that his daughter laughed in spite of herself. "Come, come, dear, is there nothing you can approve among all those rich materials? You might make me innumerable cravats, and I am such a fop I could wear a fresh one each day--to please you."
"Father Davy!" Georgiana sat back on her heels. She had slipped her bared arms into the armholes of the sleeveless white "fluff-and-flimsy"
evening frock, and the "sparklers" of the low-cut bodice now framed her blue-print clad shoulders with an astonishing effect of incongruity. "I have a wonderful inspiration. Let"s ask Jeannette out here for a visit--an object-lesson as to the state of life whereunto the country cousins have been called. She hasn"t seen me in ten years, and all I remember of her is a fluffy, yellow-haired girl with a sniffly cold in her head. What do you say, Father Davy? Shall we ask her?"
Her father"s gaze, quiet, comprehending, more than a little amused, met Georgiana"s, audacious, defiant, mischievous, yet reasonable. The two looked at each other for a full minute.
"Do you think she would come?" Mr. Warne inquired doubtfully.
"Why shouldn"t she come? She"s had a gay winter so far, but not a happy one. She"s no debutante any more, you know; she"s an "old girl" in her fifth season. That"s what the society girls get by coming out at eighteen. Now I, who am only a year out of college and who never "came out" in my life, am as keen at the game of being grown up as if I were just putting up my hair for the first time. Well, Jeannette"s been keeping up the pace all winter, is thoroughly worn out and unhappy, and doesn"t know what to do with herself. It"s March--and Lent--the time of year when the society folks betake themselves to spring resorts to recover their shattered nerves. Don"t you think she"d jump at the chance to come to the little country town and try what our air and our cookery would do for her?"
"You seem to know all about her in spite of not having seen or known her--except through these boxes of clothes--since she was a little girl."
"Ah, that"s just it--through her boxes--that"s how I know her!"
Triumphantly Georgiana held up the cerise velvet gown. "Don"t I know a girl who would wear that? Wild for excitement--that"s why she chose the colour. But she didn"t get the fun she expected; he didn"t like it--or somebody said she looked too pale in it--and she fired it at me before she had done more than take the freshness off. _I_ can wear it--see here!"
She got to her feet, untied the little black silk tie which held the low-rolling collar of her working dress at the throat, unfastened a row of hooks, and let the blue print slip to her feet. Over the glory of her white shoulders and gleaming arms she flung the cerise velvet--gorgeous, glowing, wonderful colour, as trying to the ordinary complexion as colour can well be. But as the gown fell into place, and Georgiana, backing up to her father, was fastened somewhat tentatively into it, it would have been plain to any beholder that if the rich girl could not wear the queenly, daring robe the poor girl could--as she had said.
She swept up and down the room, her head held high. She played the part of a lady of fashion and held an imaginary reception, carrying on a stream of "society" talk with a manner which made the pale man on the couch laugh like a boy. Holding a dialogue with a hypothetical male guest, she led him out into the hall, still within sight of Mr. Warne"s couch, and was in the midst of a scene as inspiredly clever as anything she had ever done at college, where she had been the pride of a dramatic club whose fame had waxed greater than that of any similar organization for many years, when the front door of the house suddenly opened, and a gust of chilly March air rushed in with the person entering.
Georgiana wheeled--to find herself confronting the amused gaze of her boarder, Mr. E. C. Jefferson, as read the address upon his mail.
Mr. Jefferson was by this time, after a month under the roof of the old manse, well established as a member of the household, though after the somewhat remote fashion to be expected of a man whose absorbing work filled most of his waking hours. He closed the door quickly as he caught sight of Georgiana in her masquerade, removed his hat, and bent his head before the cerise velvet.
Georgiana, blushing as vividly as if it were the first time mortal man had ever beheld her pretty shoulders, threw him a laughing look, murmured: "Dress parade in borrowed finery, Mr. Jefferson; don"t let the blaze of colour put your eyes out!" and retreated toward the living-room where her father sat, much amused by the situation.
She was followed by her boarder"s reply: "I find myself still happily retaining the use of my eyes, Miss Warne. You need not be too much in haste; it is very dull outside, I a.s.sure you."
He went on up the stairs, but she had caught his smile, momentarily illumining a face which was ordinarily rather grave. Georgiana closed the living-room door upon the sight of the lithe figure rapidly ascending the staircase without a glance behind. As she faced her father she a.s.sumed the expression of a merry child caught in mischief.
"Our new lodger has certainly come upon me in all sorts of situations, not to mention disguises," she remarked, "but this is the first time he has met me in the role of leading lady on the melodramatic stage. Please unhook me, Father Davy; the play is over, and it"s time to get the pot-roast simmering. And what do you say to inviting lovely Jeannette Crofton to visit us? Would it be too hard on you?"
"Not at all, my dear. I should be glad to see your Uncle Thomas"s daughter. Invite her, by all means. You have far too little young companionship; it will do you good to have a girl of your own age in the house."
"I wonder how we shall get on," mused Georgiana. "Anyhow she"ll see what a market this is for evening frocks cut on her lines!"
CHAPTER IV
A LITERARY LIGHT
Many hours afterward, the labours of the day over, Georgiana bent her dark head above an old-fashioned writing-desk in a corner of the living-room, and dashed off the contemplated letter to her almost unknown cousin. How the invitation would be received she had little idea, but since a letter of thanks was undeniably due in response to the "Semi-Annual" box, it was certainly a simple and natural matter enough to offer in return for it a possible pleasure and a certain benefit.
"I"ll run straight down to the post-office and mail it," declared Georgiana, sealing and stamping her letter after having read it aloud to her father. "A run in this March wind will be good for me after baking and brewing all day."
"Do, daughter; and take a tumbler or two of jelly to Mrs. Ames, by the way. And pick a spray or two of the scarlet geranium to go with it." Mr.
Warne spoke from the depths of an old armchair by the living-room fire, where, with a lamp at his elbow, he was not too deep in a speech of the elder Pitt on "Quartering Soldiers in Boston," to take thought for an invalid whom he considered far less fortunate than himself.
"I will--poor, disagreeable old lady. She doesn"t admit that anything tastes as it should, but I observe our jelly is never long in disappearing."
Georgiana, now wearing in honour of the close of day a simple frock of dark-blue wool with a dash of scarlet at throat and wrists, donned a big military cape of blue, scarlet lined, and twisted about her neck a scarf of scarlet silk (dyed from a Semi-Annual petticoat!), which served less as a protection than as the finishing touch to her gay winter"s night costume. She was likely to meet few people on her way, but there were always plenty of loungers in the small village post-office, and not even a college graduate could be altogether disdainful of the masculine admiration sure to be found there, though she might ignore it.
As she closed the house door, lifting her face to a cold, starlit sky from which the clouds of the day had broken away at sundown, another door a few rods down the quiet street banged loudly, and the sharp creak of rapid footsteps was immediately to be heard upon the frozen gravel.
Georgiana smiled in the darkness at the coincidence of that banging door.
"Well met!" called a ringing voice. "Curious that I should break out of Mrs. Perkins"s just as you came along!"
"Very curious, Jimps. How do you manage it? I stole out like a cat just to avoid such a possibility. I knew you were there."
"Did you, indeed?" inquired the owner of the voice, coming up and standing still to look at what he could see of the military-caped form.
His own strongly built figure took up its position beside hers as if by right. His hand slipped lightly under her arm, and he turned her gently to face the direction in which he himself had set out. "That"s like your impertinence. To pay you for it you shall come this way," he insisted.
"It"s only a step farther, it"s not quite so hackneyed, and it will bring us out where we want to be. Look at the stars!"
"They"re wonderful!"
"Carrying something under that cape? Give it to me, chum."
"It"s only a bit of a basket, Jimps; never mind, you might spill it."
"You can"t carry a bit of a basket when I"m around! Spill nothing! Hand it over."
"Terribly dictatorial to-night, aren"t you?"