Part 9 (2/2)
”And is she glad?” Margaret said, unable to rejoice.
”Glad?” Mrs. Paget echoed, her face gladness itself.
”Well, Ju's so young,--just twenty-one,” Margaret submitted a little uncertainly; ”and she's been so free,--and they're just in the new house! And I thought they were going to Europe!”
”Oh, Europe!” Mrs. Paget dismissed it cheerfully. ”Why, it's the happiest time in a woman's life, Mark! Or I don't know, though,” she went on thoughtfully,--”I don't know but what I was happiest when you were all tiny, tumbling about me, and climbing into my lap.... Why, you love children, dear,” she finished, with a shade of reproach in her voice, as Margaret still looked sober.
”Yes, I know, Mother,” Margaret said. ”But Julie's only got the one maid, and I don't suppose they can have another. I hope to goodness Ju won't get herself all run down!”
Her mother laughed. ”You remind me of Grandma Paget,” said she, cheerfully; ”she lived ten miles away when we were married, but she came in when Bruce was born. She was rather a proud, cold woman herself, but she was very sweet to me. Well, then little Charlie came, fourteen months later, and she took that very seriously. Mother was dead, you know, and she stayed with me again, and worried me half sick telling me that it wasn't fair to Bruce and it wasn't fair to Charlie to divide my time between them that way. Well, then when my third baby was coming, I didn't dare tell her. Dad kept telling me to, and I couldn't, because I knew what a calamity a third would seem to her!
Finally she went to visit Aunt Rebecca out West, and it was the very day she got back that the baby came. She came upstairs--she'd come right up from the train, and not seen any one but Dad; and he wasn't very intelligible, I guess--and she sat down and took the baby in her arms, and says she, looking at me sort of patiently, yet as if she was exasperated too: 'Well, this is a nice way to do, the minute my back's turned! What are you going to call him, Julia?' And I said, 'I'm going to call her Margaret, for my dear husband's mother, and she's going to be beautiful and good, and grow up to marry the President!'” Mrs. Paget's merry laugh rang out. ”I never shall forget your grandmother's face.”
”Just the same,” Mrs. Paget added, with a sudden deep sigh, ”when little Charlie left us, the next year, and Brucie and Dad were both so ill, she and I agreed that you--you were just talking and trying to walk--were the only comfort we had! I could wish my girls no greater happiness than my children have been to me,” finished Mother, contentedly.
”I know,” Margaret began, half angrily; ”but what about the children?”
she was going to add. But somehow the arguments she had used so plausibly did not utter themselves easily to Mother, whose children would carry into their own middle age a wholesome dread of her anger.
Margaret faltered, and merely scowled.
”I don't like to see that expression on your face, dearie,” her mother said, as she might have said it to an eight-year-old child. ”Be my sweet girl! Why, marriage isn't marriage without children, Mark. I've been thinking all week of having a baby in my arms again,--it's so long since Rob was a baby.”
Margaret devoted herself, with a rather sullen face, to her dessert.
Mother would never feel as she did about these things, and what was the use of arguing? In the silence she heard her father speak loudly and suddenly.
”I am not in a position to have my children squander money on concerts and candy,” he said. Margaret forgot her own grievance, and looked up.
The boys looked resentful and gloomy; Rebecca was flushed, her eyes dropped, her lips trembling with disappointment.
”I had promised to take them to the Elks Concert and dance,” Mrs.
Paget interpreted hastily. ”But now Dad says the Bakers are coming over to play whist.”
”Is it going to be a good show, Ted?” Margaret asked.
”Oh,” Rebecca flashed into instant glowing response. ”It's going to be a dandy! Every one's going to be there! Ford Patterson is going to do a monologue,--he's as good as a professional!--and George is going to send up a bunch of carrots and parsnips! And the Weston Male Quartette, Mark, and a playlet by the Hunt's Crossing Amateur Theatrical Society!”
”Oh--oh!”--Margaret mimicked the eager rush of words. ”Let me take them, Dad,” she pleaded, ”if it's going to be as fine as all that!
I'll stand treat for the crowd.”
”Oh, Mark, you darling!” burst from the rapturous Rebecca.
”Say, gee, we've got to get there early!” Theodore warned them, finis.h.i.+ng his pudding with one mammoth spoonful.
”If you take them, my dear,” Mr. Paget said graciously, ”of course Mother and I are quite satisfied.”
”I'll hold Robert by one ear and Rebecca by another,” Margaret promised; ”and if she so much as dares to look at George or Ted or Jimmy Barr or Paul, I'll--”
”Oh, Jimmy belongs to Louise, now,” said Rebecca, radiantly. There was a joyous shout of laughter from the light-hearted juniors, and Rebecca, seeing her artless admission too late, turned scarlet while she laughed. Dinner broke up in confusion, as dinner at home always did, and everybody straggled upstairs to dress.
Margaret, changing her dress in a room that was insufferably hot, because the shades must be down, and the gas-lights as high as possible, reflected that another forty-eight hours would see her speeding back to the world of cool, awninged interiors, uniformed maids, the clink of iced gla.s.ses, the flash of white sails on blue water. She could surely afford for that time to be patient and sweet.
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