Part 33 (1/2)
Phillis received quite an ovation as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her calm elder-sisterly way, and put her arm round her, and hoped she was not so very tired, and there was so much to say, and so much to do, and she wanted her advice, and so on.
And on Nan's forehead lay a thoughtful pucker; and on the centre-table were sundry breadths of green silk, crisp-looking and faintly bronzed, like withered leaves with the sun on them.
”Oh, dear! has Miss Drummond been here in my absence?” asked Phillis, with the overwhelmed feeling of a beginner, who has not yet learned to separate and cla.s.sify, or the rich value of odd moments. ”Three dresses to be done at once!”
”One at a time. But never mind Miss Drummond's this moment. Mother is safe in the store-cupboard for the next half-hour, and we want to know what you mean by your ridiculous message, 'Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, not Squails.'
Dulce is dying of curiosity, and so am I.”
”Yes; but she looks so hot and tired that she must refresh herself first.” And Dulce placed on her sister's lap a plate of yellow plums, perfectly bedded in moss, which had come from the vicarage garden. And as Phillis enjoyed the dainty repast and poured out her morning's experiences in the ears of her astonished auditors, lo, the humiliation and the sting were forgotten, and only an intense sense of the humor of the situation remained.
It was Dulce whose pink cheeks were burning now.
”Oh, Phillis! how could you? It is too dreadful even to think about!
That fat old thing, too! Why, she is twice as big as Mrs. Squails!”
”Beggars cannot be choosers, my dear,” replied Phillis, airily; for rest was pleasant, and the fruit was good, and it was so delicious to feel all that was over and she was safe in her nest again; and then the pleasure of talking it all over! ”Do you know--?” she began, in a disconnected manner, and then sat and stared at her sisters with luminous gray eyes, until they begged to know what the new idea was.
”Oh, nothing,” she replied, and colored a little. And then she blurted out, in an oddly-ashamed way, ”it was talking to you two dears that put it in my head. But I could not help thinking that moment that if one is ever good enough to get to heaven, one of the greatest pleasures will be to talk about all our past miseries and difficulties, and how the angels helped us! and, though you may laugh at me,”--they were doing nothing of the kind, only admiring her with all their might,--”I have a kind of fancy that even my 'Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, not Squails' episode may have a different look up there!”
”My dear,” returned Nan, gently, for she loved all speeches of this sort, being a devout little soul and truly pious, ”nothing was further from my thoughts than to laugh at you, for the more we think in this way the grander our work will appear to us. Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs may be fat and vulgar, but when you were measuring her and answering her so prettily--and I know how nicely you would speak, Phil--I think you were as brave as one of those old knights--I cannot remember their names--who set out on some lofty quest or other!”
”I suppose the child means Sir Galahad,” observed Phillis, with a groan at Nan's ignorance. ”Oh, Nannie, I wish I could say,--
”'My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure;'”
and then she softly chanted,--for quotation never came amiss to her, and her head was crammed with choice selections from the poets,--
”'All armed I ride, whate'er betide, Until I find the Holy Grail.'”
”Yes, the Sangreal, or the Quest. It does not matter what, for it was only an allegory,” returned Nan, who had plenty of ideas, only she confused them sometimes, and was not as clever in her definitions as Phillis. ”It only meant that those grand old knights had some holy purpose and aim in their lives, for which they trained and toiled and fought. Don't you see?--the meaning is quite clear. We can have our Quest too.”
”Bless her dear heart, if she is not travelling thousands of years and miles from Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs!” exclaimed Phillis, who never could be serious long. ”Well, Nannie, I understand you, though you are a trifle vague. We will have our Quest and our unattainable standard; and I will be your maiden knight--yours and Dulce's.
”'How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favors fall!
For them I'll battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall.'”
And when she had repeated this she rose, laughing, and said they were all a little demented; and what did they mean by wasting their time when there were three dresses to be cut out? and Dulce must have the work fixed for the sewing-machine.
For the next hour there was little talk, only the snipping sound of scissors and the rustling of silken breadths, and sometimes the swish and the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning and tappings of Dulce's sewing machine, like a dozen or two of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads were full of business.
But in the afternoon, when things were in progress and looked promising, and Mrs. Challoner had had her nap, and was busy over some sleeves that they had given her to keep her quiet and satisfy her maternal conscience that she was helping her girls, Phillis did hear a little about Miss Drummond's visit. The sewing machine, which they worked by turns, had stopped for a time, and they were all three round the table, sewing and fixing as busily as possible: and Phillis, remembering Sir Galahad, dared not say she was tired, only she looked out on the lengthening shadows with delight, and thought about tea and an evening walk just to stretch her cramped muscles. And if one day seemed so long, how would a week of days appear before the blessed Sunday gave them a few hours of freedom?
It was at this moment that Nan, with fine tact, broke the silence that was good for work, but was apt to wax drowsy in time:
”Miss Milner's dress is getting on well. How fast you two girls work!
and mammie is doing the sleeves beautifully. Another afternoon you must let the work rest, mammie, and read to us, or Phillis will get restive. By the bye, Dulce, we have not told her a word about Miss Drummond's visit.”
”No, indeed: was it not good of her to come so soon?” exclaimed Dulce.
”She told us she wanted to be our first customer, and seemed quite disappointed when we said that we were bound in honor and mere grat.i.tude to send Miss Milner's dress home first. 'Not that I am in a hurry for my dress, for n.o.body cares what I wear,' she said, quite cheerfully; 'but I wanted to be the first on your list.' I wish we could oblige her, for she is a nice, unaffected little thing, and I am beginning to like her, though she is a little fussy.”