"And was he equally prompt?" asked Katy.
"He says so," replied Rose, with a pretty blush. "But then, you know, he could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don"t _love_ it!"
The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of s.p.a.ce and cheer and air and freshness, which ever after was a.s.sociated with her recollection of Boston.
Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight glorified all.
""Boston shows a soft Venetian side,"" quoted Katy, after a while. "I know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don"t believe there is a more beautiful place in the world."
"Why, of course there isn"t," retorted Rose, who was a most devoted little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington nearly all her life. "I"ve not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into the city to live. I don"t care what part I live in,--West End, South End, North End; it"s all one to me, so long as it is Boston!"
"But don"t you like Longwood?" asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now pa.s.sing. "It looks so very pretty and pleasant."
"Yes, it"s well enough for any one who has a taste for natural beauties," replied Rose. "I haven"t; I never had. There is nothing I hate so much as Nature! I"m a born c.o.c.kney. I"d rather live in one room over Jordan and Marsh"s, and see the world wag past, than be the owner of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don"t care where it may be situated."
The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia creepers, before which it stopped.
"Here we are!" cried Rose, springing out. "Now, Katy, you mustn"t even take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you."
They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted.
"Oh, you darling!" she said. "Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?"
"Why, of course she shall," replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy"s arms head first. "Now, just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in the whole course of your life before? Isn"t she big? Isn"t she beautiful? Isn"t she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her head to look at me! Oh, you angel!" And seizing the long-suffering baby, she smothered it with kisses. "I never, never, never did see anything so sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn"t she smell like heaven?"
Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily"s leaf, and a happy capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was "ten times better fun."
"I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy," she said.
"I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn"t give me tin ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones."
"Were you such a very bad child?" asked Katy.
"Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn"t think so now, would you?
I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned up in my ap.r.o.n because I _would_ make faces at the other scholars, and they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the ap.r.o.n, and ran my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this written in them: "Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not know what we shall do.""
"Why did they call you Little Frisk?" inquired Katy, after she had recovered from the laugh which Rose"s reminiscences called forth.
"It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand," she went on reflectively, "why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than that; won"t you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes--mammy will show her how!"
All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining.
It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it "just like Rose," Katy declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and "artistic" shades of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose"s taste was in advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming "reaction,"
she had chosen a "greenery, yallery" paper for her walls, against which hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a warming-pan in shining bra.s.s from her mother"s attic, two old samplers worked in faded silks, and a quant.i.ty of gayly tinted j.a.panese fans and embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of antique needle-work. One had "Chit" embroidered on the middle of its cushion; the other, "Chat." These stood suggestively at the corners of the hearth.
"Now, Katy," said Rose, seating herself in "Chit," "pull up "Chat" and let us begin."
So they did begin, and went on, interrupted only by Baby Rose"s coos and splutters, till the dusk fell, till appetizing smells floated through from the rear of the house, and the click of a latch-key announced Mr.
Browne, come home just in time for dinner.
The two days" visit went only too quickly. There is nothing more fascinating to a girl than the menage of a young couple of her own age.
It is a sort of playing at real life without the cares and the sense of responsibility that real life is sure to bring. Rose was an adventurous housekeeper. She was still new to the position, she found it very entertaining, and she delighted in experiments of all sorts. If they turned out well, it was good fun; if not, that was funnier still! Her husband, for all his serious manner, had a real boy"s love of a lark, and he aided and abetted her in all sorts of whimsical devices. They owned a dog who was only less dear than the baby, a cat only less dear than the dog, a parrot whose education required constant supervision, and a hutch of ring-doves whose melancholy little "whuddering" coos were the delight of Rose the less. The house seemed astir with young life all over. The only elderly thing in it was the cook, who had the reputation of a dreadful temper; only, unfortunately, Rose made her laugh so much that she never found time to be cross.
Katy felt quite an old, experienced person amid all this movement and liveliness and cheer. It seemed to her that n.o.body in the world could possibly be having such a good time as Rose; but Rose did not take the same view of the situation.
"It"s all very well now," she said, "while the warm weather lasts; but in winter Longwood is simply grewsome. The wind never stops blowing day nor night. It howls and it roars and it screams, till I feel as if every nerve in my body were on the point of snapping in two. And the snow, ugh! And the wind, ugh! And burglars! Every night of our lives they come,--or I think they come,--and I lie awake and hear them sharpening their tools and forcing the locks and murdering the cook and kidnapping Baby, till I long to die, and have done with them forever! Oh, Nature is the most unpleasant thing!"
"Burglars are not Nature," objected Katy.
"What are they, then? Art? High Art? Well, whatever they are, I do not like them. Oh, if ever the happy day comes when Deniston consents to move into town, I never wish to set my eyes on the country again as long as I live, unless--well, yes, I should like to come out just once more in the horse-cars and _kick_ that elm-tree by the fence! The number of times that I have lain awake at night listening to its creaking!"
"You might kick it without waiting to have a house in town."
"Oh, I shouldn"t dare as long as we are living here! You never know what Nature may do. She has ways of her own of getting even with people,"
remarked her friend, solemnly.
No time must be lost in showing Boston to Katy, Rose said. So the morning after her arrival she was taken in bright and early to see the sights. There were not quite so many sights to be seen then as there are today. The Art Museum had not got much above its foundations; the new Trinity Church was still in the future; but the big organ and the bronze statue of Beethoven were in their glory, and every day at high noon a small straggling audience wandered into Music Hall to hear the instrument played. To this extempore concert Katy was taken, and to Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum, to Doll and Richards"s, where was an exhibition of pictures, to the Granary Graveyard, and the Old South.
Then the girls did a little shopping; and by that time they were quite tired enough to make the idea of luncheon agreeable, so they took the path across the Common to the Joy Street Mall.
Katy was charmed by all she had seen. The delightful nearness of so many interesting things surprised her. She perceived what is one of Boston"s chief charms,--that the Common and its surrounding streets make a natural centre and rallying-point for the whole city; as the heart is the centre of the body and keeps up a quick correspondence and regulates the life of all its extremities. The stately old houses on Beacon Street, with their rounded fronts, deep window-cas.e.m.e.nts, and here and there a mauve or a lilac pane set in the sashes, took her fancy greatly; and so did the State House, whose situation made it sufficiently imposing, even before the gilding of the dome.
Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt.
Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill, whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in the rear was a s.p.a.cious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden, walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette.
Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy into a roomy white-painted hall.
"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost; she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I don"t want to think of the country, but I"m never allowed to forget it for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden."
There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy"s heart warmed to her at once.
Mrs. Redding was a fair little woman, scarcely taller than Rose and very much like her. She gave Katy a kind welcome.
"You do not seem like a stranger," she said, "Rose has told us so much about you and your sister. Sylvia will be very disappointed not to see you. She went off to make some visits when we broke up in the country, and is not to be home for three weeks yet."
Katy was disappointed, too, for she had heard a great deal about Sylvia and had wished very much to meet her. She was shown her picture, from which she gathered that she did not look in the least like Rose; for though equally fair, her fairness was of the tall aquiline type, quite different from Rose"s dimpled prettiness. In fact, Rose resembled her mother, and Sylvia her father; they were only alike in little peculiarities of voice and manner, of which a portrait did not enable Katy to judge.
The two girls had a cosey little luncheon with Mrs. Redding, after which Rose carried Katy off to see the house and everything in it which was in any way connected with her own personal history,--the room where she used to sleep, the high-chair in which she sat as a baby and which was presently to be made over to little Rose, the sofa where Deniston offered himself, and the exact spot on the carpet on which she had stood while they were being married! Last of all,--
"Now you shall see the best and dearest thing in the whole house,"
she said, opening the door of a room in the second story.-- "Grandmamma, here is my friend Katy Carr, whom you have so often heard me tell about."
It was a large pleasant room, with a little wood-fire blazing in a grate, by which, in an arm-chair full of cushions, with a Solitaire-board on a little table beside her, sat a sweet old lady.
This was Rose"s father"s mother. She was nearly eighty; but she was beautiful still, and her manner had a gracious old-fashioned courtesy which was full of charm. She had been thrown from a carriage the year before, and had never since been able to come downstairs or to mingle in the family life.
"They come to me instead," she told Katy. "There is no lack of pleasant company," she added; "every one is very good to me. I have a reader for two hours a day, and I read to myself a little, and play Patience and Solitaire, and never lack entertainment."
There was something restful in the sight of such a lovely specimen of old age. Katy realized, as she looked at her, what a loss it had been to her own life that she had never known either of her grandparents.
She sat and gazed at old Mrs. Redding with a mixture of regret and fascination. She longed to hold her hand, and kiss her, and play with her beautiful silvery hair, as Rose did. Rose was evidently the old lady"s peculiar darling. They were on the most intimate terms; and Rose dimpled and twinkled, and made saucy speeches, and told all her little adventures and the baby"s achievements, and made jests, and talked nonsense as freely as to a person of her own age. It was a delightful relation.
"Grandmamma has taken a fancy to you, I can see," she told Katy, as they drove back to Longwood. "She always wants to know my friends; and she has her own opinions about them, I can tell you."