Part 37 (2/2)

”It is perfectly absurd,” said Mrs Ledwith. ”You couldn't be left to take care of yourself. And if you could, how it would look! No; of course you must go with us.”

”But do you _care_?”

”Why, if there were any proper way, and if you really hate so to go,--but there isn't,” said Mrs. Ledwith, not very grammatically or connectedly.

”She _doesn't_ care,” said Desire to herself, after her mother had left her, turning her face to the pillow, upon which two tears ran slowly down. ”And that is my fault, too, I suppose. I have never been _anything_!”

Lying there, she made up her mind to one thing. She would get Uncle t.i.tus to come, and she would talk to him.

”He won't encourage me in any notions,” she said to herself. ”And I mean now, if I can find it out, to do the thing G.o.d means; and then I suppose,--I _believe_,--the snarl will begin to unwind.”

Meanwhile, Luclarion, when she had set a nice little bowl of tea-m.u.f.fins to rise, and had brought up a fresh pitcher of ice-water into Desire's room, put on her bonnet and went over to Aspen Street for an hour.

Down in the kitchen, at Mrs. Ripwinkley's, they were having a nice time.

Their girl had gone. Since Luclarion left, they had fallen into that Gulf-stream which nowadays runs through everybody's kitchen. Girls came, and saw, and conquered in their fas.h.i.+on; they muddled up, and went away.

The nice times were in the intervals when they _had_ gone away.

Mrs. Ripwinkley did not complain; it was only her end of the ”stump;” why should she expect to have a Luclarion Grapp to serve her all her life?

This last girl had gone as soon as she found out that Sulie Praile was ”no relation, and didn't anyways belong there, but had been took in.” She ”didn't go for to come to work in an _Insecution_. She had always been used to first-cla.s.s private families.”

Girls will not stand any added numbers, voluntarily a.s.sumed, or even involuntarily befalling; they will a.s.sist in taking up no new responsibilities; to allow things to remain as they are, and cannot help being, is the depth of their condescension,--the extent of what they will put up with. There must be a family of some sort, of course, or there would not be a ”place;” that is what the family is made for; but it must be established, no more to fluctuate; that is, you may go away, some of you, if you like, or you may die; but n.o.body must come home that has been away, and n.o.body must be born.

As to anybody being ”took in!” Why, the girl defined it; it was not being a family, but an _Insecution_.

So the three--Diana, and Hazel, and Sulie--were down in the kitchen; Mrs. Ripwinkley was busy in the dining-room close by; there was a berry-cake to be mixed up for an early tea. Diana was picking over the berries, Hazel was chopping the b.u.t.ter into the flour, and Sulie on a low cus.h.i.+oned seat in a corner--there was one kept ready for her in every room in the house, and Hazel and Diana carried her about in an ”arm-chair,” made of their own clasped hands and wrists, wherever they all wanted to go,--Sulie was beating eggs.

Sulie did that so patiently; you see she had no temptation to jump up and run off to anything else. The eggs turned, under her fingers, into thick, creamy, golden froth, fine to the last possible divisibility of the little air-bubbles.

They could not do without Sulie now. They had had her for ”all winter;” but in that winter she had grown into their home.

”Why,” said Hazel to her mother, when they had the few words about it that ended in there being no more words at all,--”that's the way children are _born_ into houses, isn't it? They just come; and they're new and strange at first, and seem so queer. And then after a while you can't think how the places were, and they not in them.

Sulie belongs, mother!”

So Sulie beat eggs, and darned stockings, and painted her lovely little flower-panels and racks and easels, and did everything that could be done, sitting still in her round chair, or in the cus.h.i.+oned corners made for her; and was always in the kitchen, above all, when any pretty little cookery was going forward.

Vash ran in and out from the garden, and brought balsamine blossoms, from which she pulled the little fairy slippers, and tried to match them in pairs; and she picked off the ”used-up and puckered-up”

morning glories, which she blew into at the tube-end, and ”snapped”

on the back of her little brown hand.

Wasn't that being good for anything, while berry-cake was making?

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