The Other Girls - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (free novels to read TXT) 📗

in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a House of Refuge.

"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,--except _my_ home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia."

There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff.

Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you anything before as concerning him.

He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and kerseys; _driving_, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something and making it go.

"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage; that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and the dust. Why, _this_ is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't make me deaf,--and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said, with an indescribably pathetic demureness.

"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily.

"Well,--yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it for two years, before I--ask him for anything else. I think I shall have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They always do."

What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him; he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy.

But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound!

Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner, reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange, all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs. Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on.

And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for making of herself.

Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet.

"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive here, for him to be let in."

Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback.

"Boy! Here! toss up your load!"

The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels drooping all about him.

Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers toward them with a smile.

"Such a quantity--for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were, Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully round and round into a heap.

No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf; she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for.

In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into her lap.

She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her.

It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it just like this."

Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him on his cheek, saying nothing.

But to herself she said, after he had gone,--

"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is anybody sure of the rest of it?"

Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers.


CHAPTER XX.

"WANTED."

The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's sake.

She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be unbricked?

"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the draught is excellent."

"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter.

"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning."

Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three little pitch-pine sticks.

There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness, and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a certain passive sense of participancy.

In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting out toilet cases upon table and stand.

For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being intruded upon.

Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as she with much compunction practised upon her mother.

"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so.

"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said.

Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can possibly gratify her mother in."

There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen, in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to