Part 27 (1/2)
Miss Craydocke thought it a good thing wisely limited.
”Sulie needs to be with older girls; there is no one in the Home to be companion to her; the children are almost all little. A winter here would be a blessing to her!”
”But the change again, if she should have to make it?” suggested Mrs. Ripwinkley.
”Good things don't turn to bad ones because you can't have them any more. A thing you're not fit for, and never ought to have had, may; but a real good stays by; it overflows all the rest. Sulie Praile's life could never be so poor again, after a winter here with you, as it might be if she had never had it. If you'd like her, let her come, and don't be a bit afraid. We're only working by inches, any of us; like the camel's-hair embroiderers in China. But it gets put together; and it is beautiful, and large, and whole, somewhere.”
”Miss Craydocke always knows,” said Hazel.
n.o.body said anything again, about Uncle t.i.tus. A winter's plan need not be referred to him. But Hazel, in her own mind, had resolved to find out what was Uncle t.i.tus's, generally and theoretically; how free they were to be, beyond winter plans and visits of weeks; how much scope they might have with this money and this house, that seemed so ample to their simple wants, and what they might do with it and turn it into, if it came into their heads or hearts or consciences.
So one day she went in and sat down by him in the study, after she had accomplished some household errand with Rachel Froke.
Other people approached him with more or less of strategy, afraid of the tiger in him; Desire Ledwith faced him courageously; only Hazel came and nestled up beside him, in his very cage, as if he were no wild beast, after all.
Yet he pretended to growl, even at her, sometimes; it was so funny to see her look up and chirp on after it, like some little bird to whom the language of beasts was no language at all, and pa.s.sed by on the air as a very big sound, but one that in no wise concerned it.
”We've got Sulie Praile to spend the winter, Uncle t.i.tus,” she said.
”Who's Sulie Praile?”
”The lame girl, from the Home. We wanted somebody for Vash to wait on, you know. She sits in a round chair, that twists, like yours; and she's--just like a lily in a vase!” Hazel finished her sentence with a simile quite unexpected to herself.
There was something in Sulie's fair, pale, delicate face, and her upper figure, rising with its own peculiar lithe, easily swayed grace from among the gathered folds of the dress of her favorite dark green color, that reminded--if one thought of it, and Hazel turned the feeling of it into a thought at just this moment--of a beautiful white flower, tenderly and commodiously planted.
”Well, I suppose it's worth while to have a lame girl to sit up in a round chair, and look like a lily in a vase, is it?”
”Uncle t.i.tus, I want to know what you think about some things.”
”That is just what I want to know myself, sometimes. To find out what one thinks about things, is pretty much the whole finding, isn't it?”
”Don't be very metaphysical, please, Uncle t.i.tus. Don't turn your eyes round into the back of your head. That isn't what I mean.”
”What do you mean?”
”Just plain looking.”
”O!”
”Don't you think, when there are places, all nice and ready,--and people that would like the places and haven't got 'em,--that the people ought to be put into the places?”
”'The s.h.i.+rtless backs put into the s.h.i.+rts?'”
”Why, yes, of course. What are s.h.i.+rts made for?”
”For some people to have thirty-six, and some not to have any,” said Mr. Oldways.
”No,” said Hazel. ”n.o.body wants thirty-six, all at once. But what I mean is, rooms, and corners, and pleasant windows, and seats at the table; places where people come in visiting, and that are kept saved up. I can't bear an empty box; that is, only for just one pleasant minute, while I'm thinking what I can put into it.”