"We ought not to have been idle so much," said Barbara. "We"ve been a family of gra.s.shoppers all summer."
"Well, the gra.s.shopping has done you all good. I"m not sorry for it,"
said Mrs. Holabird. "Only we must have Delia for a week now, and be busy."
"If Delia Waite didn"t have to come to our table!" said Rosamond.
"Why don"t you try the girl Mrs. Hadden has, mother? She goes right into the kitchen with the other servants."
"I don"t believe our "other servants" would know what to do with her,"
said Barbara. "There"s always such a crowd in our kitchen."
"Barbara, you"re a plague!"
"Yes. I"m the thorn in the flesh in this family, lest it should be exalted above measure; and like Saint Paul, I magnify mine office."
"In the way we live," said Mrs. Holabird, "it is really more convenient to let a seamstress come right to table with us; and besides, you know what I think about it. It is a little breath of life to a girl like that; she gets something that we can give as well as not, and that helps her up. It comes naturally, as it cannot come with "other servants." She sits with us all day; her work is among ladies, and with them; she gets something so far, even in the midst of measuring and gorings, that common housemaids cannot get; why shouldn"t she be with us when we can leave off talk of measures and gores, and get what Ruth calls the "very next"? Delia Waite is too nice a girl to be put into the kitchen to eat with Katty, in her "crowd.""
"But it seems to set us down; it seems common in us to be so ready to be familiar with common people. More in us, because we do live plainly. If Mrs. Hadden or Mrs. Marchbanks did it, it might seem kind _without_ the common. I think they ought to begin such things."
"But then if they don"t? Very likely it would be far more inconvenient for them; and not the same good either, because it _would_ be, or seem, a condescension. We are the "very next," and we must be content to be the step we are."
"It"s the other thing with us,--con-_as_cension,--isn"t it, mother? A step up for somebody, and no step down for anybody. Mrs. Ingleside does it," Ruth added.
"O, Mrs. Ingleside does all sorts of things. She has _that_ sort of position. It"s as independent as the other. High moral and high social can do anything. It"s the betwixt and between that must be careful."
"What a miserably negative set we are, in such a positive state of the world!" cried Barbara. "Except Ruth"s music, there isn"t a specialty among us; we haven"t any views; we"re on the mean-spirited side of the Woman Question; "all woman, and no question," as mother says; we shall never preach, nor speech, nor leech; we can"t be magnificent, and we won"t be common! I don"t see what is to become of us, unless--and I wonder if maybe that isn"t it?--we just do two or three rather right things in a no-particular sort of a way."
"Barbara, how nice you are!" cried Ruth.
"No. I"m a thorn. Don"t touch me."
"We never have company when we are having sewing done," said Mrs.
Holabird. "We can always manage that."
"I don"t want to play Box and c.o.x," said Rosamond.
"That"s the beauty of you, Rosa Mundi!" said Barbara, warmly. "You don"t want to _play_ anything. That"s where you"ll come out sun-clear and diamond bright!"
CHAPTER V.
THE "BACK YETT AJEE."
Those who do not like common people need not read this chapter.
We had Delia Waite the next week. It happened well, in a sort of Box-and-c.o.x fashion; for Mrs. Van Alstyne went off with some friends to the Isles of Shoals, and Alice and Adelaide Marchbanks went with her; so that we knew we should see nothing of the two great families for a good many days; and when Leslie came, or the Haddens, we did not so much mind; besides, they knew that we were busy, and they did not expect any "coil" got up for them. Leslie came right up stairs, when she was alone; if Harry or Mr. Thayne were with her, one of us would take a wristband or a bit of ruffling, and go down. Somehow, if it happened to be Harry, Barbara was always tumultuously busy, and never offered to receive: but it always ended in Rosamond"s making her. It seemed to be one of the things that people wait to be overcome in their objections to.
We always had a snug, cosey time when Delia was with us; we were all simple and busy, and the work was getting on; that was such an under-satisfaction; and Delia was having such a good time. She hardly ever failed to come to us when we wanted her; she could always make some arrangement.
Ruth was artful; she tucked in Lucilla Waters, after all; she said it would be such a nice chance to have her; she knew she would rather come when we were by ourselves, and especially when we had our work and patterns about. Lucilla brought a sack and an overskirt to make; she could hardly have been spared if she had had to bring mere idle work. She sewed in gathers upon the shirts for mother, while Delia cut out her pretty material in a style she had not seen. If we had had gra.s.shopper parties all summer before, this was certainly a bee, and I think we all really liked it just as well as the other.
We had the comfort of mother"s great, airy room, now, as we had never even realized it before. Everybody had a window to sit at; green-shaded with closed blinds for the most part; but that is so beautiful in summer, when the out-of-doors comes br.i.m.m.i.n.g in with scent and sound, and we know how glorious it is if we choose to open to it, and how glorious it is going to be when we do throw all wide in the cooling afternoon.
"How glad I am we _have_ to have busy weeks sometimes!" said Ruth, stopping the little "common-sense" for an instant, while she tossed a long flouncing over her sewing-table. "I know now why people who never do their own work are obliged to go away from home for a change.
It must be dreadfully same if they didn"t. I like a book full of different stories!"
Lucilla Waters lives down in the heart of the town. So does Leslie Goldthwaite, to be sure; but then Mr. Goldthwaite"s is one of the old, old-fashioned houses that were built when the town was country, and that has its great yard full of trees and flowers around it now; and Mrs. Waters lives in a block, flat-face to the street, with nothing pretty outside, and not very much in; for they have never been rich, the Waterses, and Mr. Waters died ten years ago, when Lucilla was a little child. Lucilla and her mother keep a little children"s school; but it was vacation now, of course.
Lucilla is in Mrs. Ingleside"s Bible-cla.s.s; that is how Ruth, and then the rest of us, came to know her. Arctura Fish is another of Mrs.
Ingleside"s scholars. She is a poor girl, living at service,--or, rather, working in a family for board, clothing, and a little "schooling,"--the best of which last she gets on Sundays of Mrs.
Ingleside,--until she shall have "learned how," and be "worth wages."
Arctura Fish is making herself up, slowly, after the pattern of Lucilla Waters. She would not undertake Leslie Goldthwaite or Helen Josselyn,--Mrs. Ingleside"s younger sister, who stays with her so much,--or even our quiet Ruth. But Lucilla Waters comes _just next_.
She can just reach up to her. She can see how she does up her hair, in something approaching the new way, leaning back behind her in the cla.s.s and tracing out the twists between the questions; for Lucilla can only afford to use her own, and a few strands of harmless Berlin wool under it; she can"t buy coils and braids and two-dollar rats, or intricacies ready made up at the--upholsterer"s, I was going to say.
So it is not a hopeless puzzle and an impracticable achievement to little Arctura Fish. It is wonderful how nice she has made herself look lately, and how many little ways she puts on, just like Lucilla"s. She hasn"t got beyond mere mechanical copying, yet; when she reaches to where Lucilla really is, she will take in differently.
Ruth gave up her little white room to Delia Waite, and went to sleep with Lucilla in the great, square east room.
Delia Waite thought a great deal of this; and it was wonderful how n.o.body could ever get a peep at the room when it looked as if anything in it had been used or touched. Ruth is pretty nice about it; but she cannot keep it so _sacredly_ fair and pure as Delia did for her. Only one thing showed.
"I say," said Stephen, one morning, sliding by Ruth on the stair-rail as they came down to breakfast, "do you look after that _piousosity_, now, mornings?"
"No," said Ruth, laughing, "of course I can"t."
"It"s always whopped," said Stephen, sententiously.
Barbara got up some of her special cookery in these days. Not her very finest, out of Miss Leslie; she said that was too much like the fox and the crane, when Lucilla asked for the receipts. It wasn"t fair to give a taste of things that we ourselves could only have for very best, and send people home to wish for them. But she made some of her "griddles trimmed with lace," as only Barbara"s griddles were trimmed; the brown lightness running out at the edges into crisp filigree. And another time it was the flaky spider-cake, turned just as it blushed golden-tawny over the coals; and then it was breakfast potato, beaten almost frothy with one white-of-egg, a pretty good bit of b.u.t.ter, a few spoonfuls of top-of-the-milk, and seasoned plentifully with salt, and delicately with pepper,--the oven doing the rest, and turning it into a snowy souffle.
Barbara said we had none of us a specialty; she knew better; only hers was a very womanly and old-fashioned, not to say kitcheny one; and would be quite at a discount when the grand co-operative kitchens should come into play; for who cares to put one"s genius into the universal and indiscriminate mouth, or make potato-souffles to be carried half a mile to the table?
Barbara delighted to "make company" of seamstress week; "it was so nice," she said, "to entertain somebody who thought "chickings was "evingly.""
Rosamond liked that part of it; she enjoyed giving pleasure no less than any; but she had a secret misgiving that we were being very vulgarly comfortable in an underhand way. She would never, by any means, go off by herself to eat with her fingers.
Delia Waite said she never came to our house that she did not get some new ideas to carry home to Arabel.
Arabel Waite was fifty years old, or more; she was the oldest child of one marriage and Delia the youngest of another. All the Waites between them had dropped away,--out of the world, or into homes here and there of their own,--and Arabel and Delia were left together in the square, low, gambrel-roofed house over on the other hill, where the town ran up small.
Arabel Waite was an old dressmaker. She _could_ make two skirts to a dress, one shorter, the other longer; and she could cut out the upper one by any new paper pattern; and she could make sh.e.l.l-tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and flutings and box-plaitings and flouncings, and sew them on exquisitely, even now, with her old eyes; but she never had adapted herself to the modern ideas of the corsage. She could not fit a bias to save her life; she could only st.i.tch up a straight slant, and leave the rest to nature and fate. So all her people had the squarest of wooden fronts, and were preternaturally large around the waist. Delia sewed with her, abroad and at home,--abroad without her, also, as she was doing now for us. A pattern for a sleeve, or a cape, or a panier,--or a receipt for a tea-biscuit or a johnny-cake, was something to go home with rejoicing.
Arabel Waite and Delia could only use three rooms of the old house; the rest was blinded and shut up; the garret was given over to the squirrels, who came in from the great b.u.t.ternut-trees in the yard, and stowed away their rich provision under the eaves and away down between the walls, and grew fat there all winter, and frolicked like a troop of horse. We liked to hear Delia tell of their pranks, and of all the other queer, quaint things in their way of living. Everybody has a way of living; and if you can get into it, every one is as good as a story. It always seemed to us as if Delia brought with her the atmosphere of mysterious old houses, and old, old books stowed away in their by-places, and stories of the far past that had been lived there, and curious ancient garments done with long ago, and packed into trunks and bureaus in the dark, unused rooms, where there had been parties once, and weddings and funerals and children"s games in nurseries; and strange fellowship of little wild things that strayed in now,--bees in summer, and squirrels in winter,--and brought the woods and fields with them under the old roof. Why, I think we should have missed it more than she would, if we had put her into some back room, and poked her sewing in at her, and left her to herself!
The only thing that wasn"t nice that week was Aunt Roderick coming over one morning in the very thick of our work, and Lucilla"s too, walking straight up stairs, as aunts can, whether you want them or not, and standing astonished at the great goings-on.
"Well!" she exclaimed, with a strong falling inflection, "are any of you getting ready to be married?"