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

which had not been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable procrastinations.

[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby, averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time should be no longer.]

Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white, hemmed dishcloths.

"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together."

When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot Ingraham's advertisement.

Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself a little human being, and not a tadpole."

Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done. Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants, which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom.

They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her mother.

All went blessedly at the Horse Shoe; but there is not a Horse Shoe everywhere. It is always a piece of luck to find one.

Desire Ledwith knew that; so she held her peace about it for a while, among these girls to whom Bel Bree was preaching her crusade. All they knew was that Dot Ingraham and her machine were gone away into a family eighteen miles from Boston.

"If _you_ find anything for me to do, Miss Ledwith, I'll do it," said Kate Sencerbox. "But I won't go into one of those offices, nor off into the country for the winter. I want to keep something to hold on to,--not run out to sea without a rope."

Desire did not propose advertising, as she had done to Dot; she would let Kate wait a week. A week in the new condition of things might teach her a good deal.


CHAPTER XXVI.

TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'.

There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household.

The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"--as his mother said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the "Looking Glass,"--upon a stick.

Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,--the very happiest and most reckless kind,--in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman, who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family idiosyncrasies.

Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names.

Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch.

"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then--how _am_ I accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?"

But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was disapproval.

"It was bad enough," they said,--these orderers of household administration,--"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and no laundress!"

"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too thin!"

"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend, calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week, an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a laundress!"

"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin' round?"

"Ad_ver_tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an' send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer _consider_. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an ad_ver_tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'. I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies. Yer'll see 'em come in,--betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate; an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells 'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter. Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!"

Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped head.

It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of it.

"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick, carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead with arnica water.

"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated 'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied."

"You _what_?"

"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!"

"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too big. And little sparrows don't fly--down-stairs. They hop round, and pick up crumbs."

"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness.

"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either. The trouble is, you haven't _quite_ turned into a little bird, yet. You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow."

"I _ta'h_ wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!"

"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave, funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible--I mean impossible--place in the house."

"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity.

"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see here! Little birds that live in houses _never_ fly. And they never pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows, and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds; mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless she takes you."

"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?"

Asenath looked up at her husband.

"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,--God's sparrows."

"In cages?"

"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There! That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back."

She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all, that was just waking.

Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the nursery carpet.

"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone."

Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she sharpened their little wits continually