Part 59 (1/2)

Mrs. Anderson enveloped the girl in her large, gentle, lavender-scented embrace, and received with pleasant disclaimers her a.s.surances of obligations and thanks; then she stood in the window and, with a little misgiving, and a ready imagination for future trouble, watched them emerge from the little front yard and disappear down the street under the low-growing maple branches which were turning slowly, and flashed gold over their heads in electric lights.

She reflected judicially that while Charlotte was undoubtedly a sweet girl, and very pretty, very pretty, indeed, and, while her own heart was drawn to her, yet she would make no sort of wife for her son. She remembered with a shudder Eddy's remarks at the table.

”He is a pretty little boy, too,” she thought, with a maternal thrill, remembering her own son at that age. When she returned to the dining-room to wash the pink-and-gold cups and saucers, in her little bowl of hot water on the end of the table, as was her custom when the best china had been used, the maid, who was clearing the table, and who had been encouraged to conversation from the lack of another woman in the house, and her mistress's habit of gentle garrulity, spoke upon the subject in her mind.

”Them was them Carrolls that lives in the Ranger place, was they not?” said she. The maid was a curious product of the region, having somewhat anomalously graduated at a high-school in New Sanderson before entering service, and gotten a strange load of una.s.similated knowledge, which was particularly exemplified in her English. She scorned contractions, but equally scorned possessives and legitimate tenses. She wrote a beautiful hand, using quite ambitious words, but she totally misinterpreted the meaning of these very words in current literature, particularly the cook-book. Her bread was as heavy with undigested facts as is the stomach of a dyspeptic with food, but she was, in a way, a good servant, very faithful, attached to Mrs.

Anderson, and a guileless purveyor of gossip, which rendered her exceedingly entertaining. She sniffed meaningly now in response to Mrs. Anderson's affirmative with regard to the ident.i.ty of the recent guests.

”They did not fail to eat enough,” said she, presently, packing up the plates and looking at her mistress, who was drying carefully a pink-and-gold cup on a soft towel.

”Yes, they seemed to relish the food,” responded Mrs. Anderson.

The maid sniffed again, and her sniff meant the gratification of the cook who sees her work appreciated, and something else--an indulgent scorn. ”Well, I guess there is reason enough for them relis.h.i.+ng it,”

said she.

Mrs. Anderson made a soft, interrogatory noise, all that was consistent with her dignity and her sense of honor as a recent hostess towards departed guests.

The maid went on. ”They do say,” said she, ”them as knows, that them Carrolls do not have enough to eat.”

Mrs. Anderson made a little exclamation expressive of horror and pity.

”Yes, they do say so,” the maid went on, solemnly. ”They do say, them that knows, that them Carrolls be owing everybody in Banbridge, and have cheated folks that have trusted in them awful.”

”Well, I am sorry if it is so,” said Mrs. Anderson, with a sigh, ”but of course this young lady who was here to-night and her little brother can't be to blame in any way, Emma.”

The maid sniffed with a deprecating disagreement. ”Mebbe they be not,” said she. She was rather a pretty girl, in her late girlhood, thin and large-boned, with a bright color on her evident cheek-bones, and with small, sparkling, blue eyes. She was extremely neat and trim, moreover, in her personal habits, and to-night was quite gorgeously arrayed in a light silk waist and a nice black skirt. She was expecting her beau to take her to evening prayer-meeting. She was a very religious girl, and had reclaimed her beau, who had had a liking for the gin-mills previous to keeping company with her.

”Of course they are not,” said Mrs. Anderson, with some warmth of partisans.h.i.+p, remembering poor little Charlotte's pretty, anxious face and her tiny, soft, clinging hands. She glanced, as she spoke, at the maid's large, red-knuckled fingers with a mental comparison.

The maid was fixed in her own rendering of English verbs, and had told her beau that her mistress did not speak just right, like most old folks.

”Mebbe they be not,” she said, with firm doubt. Then she added, ”It would not hurt them Carroll ladies, that young lady, nor her mother, nor her aunt, if they was to take hold, and do the housework them own selves, instead of keeping a girl, who they do not never pay.”

”Oh, dear! Do you know that?”

”Indeed I do know that! Ed, he told me. He had it straight from them Hungarians who live in the house back of his married sister's. The Carroll girl, she goes there, and she told them, and them told Ed's sister.”

”Perhaps she has had some of her wages. You don't mean she has not been paid at all?” Mrs. Anderson said.

”I mean not at all,” the maid said, firmly. ”That girl that works for them Carrolls has not been paid, not at all.”

”Why does she remain there, then?”

”She would have went a long time ago if she not been afraid, lest, if she had went, it would have come about that she would have lost all she was going to lose as well as that which she had lost before,”

replied the girl, and Mrs. Anderson, being accustomed to her method of expression, understood.

”It is dreadful,” she said.

”They say he has about ruined a great many of the people in Banbridge who have trusted them,” said the maid, with a sly, keen glance at her mistress. She had heard that Mr. Anderson was one of the losers, and she wondered.

”They have paid my son promptly, I believe,” said Mrs. Anderson, although a little reluctantly. She always disliked alluding to the store to her maid, much more so than towards her equals. But that the maid misunderstood. She often told her beau that Mrs. Anderson was not a bit set up nor proud-feeling, if her son _did_ have a store.

Therefore, to-night she understood humility instead of pride from her mistress's tone, and looked at her admiringly as she daintily polished the delicate pink-and-gold cups.