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

against her own without straining them.

And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever. Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up dinner-tables and drawing-rooms.

"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort by it in the end,--Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe more in growing up than in coming out."

If there was a reflex action in the mental influence, how much more in the tender and spiritual! How many a word came back into her own heart like a dove, that she first thought of in giving it to her child!

She sat now in her chamber bathing and dressing baby Karen; and all the perplexities of the day,--the days or weeks, perhaps,--that had stretched out before her, melted into a sweetness, remembering that she herself was but one of God's sparrows, fed out of his hand; and that all her limitations, as well as her unsuspected safeties, were the fine wires with which He surrounded and held her in.

"He knows my cage," she thought. "He has put me here Himself, and He will not forget me."

Frank dined down town; Asenath had her lunch of bread and butter, and beef tea; and an egg beaten in a tumbler, with sugar and cream, for her dessert. The children, with their biscuit and milk and baked apple, were easily cared for. They played "sparrow" all day; Asenath put their little bowls and spoons on the low nursery table, and left them to "help themselves."

Honest, rough Mrs. M'Cormick fetched and carried for her, and "cleaned up" down-stairs. Then Asenath wrote a few lines to Desire Ledwith, told her strait, and asked if she could take a little trouble for her, and send her some one.

Mrs. M'Cormick went round to Greenley Street, and delivered the note.

"There!" said Desire, when she had read it, to Bel Bree who was in the room. "The Providence mail is in, early; and this is for you."

When Bel had seen what it was, she realized suddenly that Providence had taken her at her word. She was in for it now; here was this thing for her to do. Her breath shortened with the thought of it, as with a sudden plunge into water. Who could tell how it would turn out? She had been so brave in counseling and urging others; what if she should make a mistake of it, herself?

"She hasn't anybody; she would take Kate, maybe Kate must just go. It won't be half a chance to try it, if I can't try it my way."

"It is a clear stage," said Desire Ledwith. "If you can act out your little programme anywhere, you can act it at the Schermans'."

"Is it a cellar kitchen?"

Bel laughed as soon as she had asked the question. She caught herself turning catechetical at once, after the servant-girl fashion.

"I was thinking about Kate. But I don't wonder they inquire about things. It's a question of home."

"Of course it is. There ought to be questions,--on both parts. Every fair person knows _that_ is fair. Neither side ought to assume the pure bestowal of a favor. But the one who has the home already may be supposed to consider at least as carefully whom she will take in, as she who comes to offer service as an equivalent. I believe it is a cellar kitchen; at least, a basement. The house is on the lower side; there must be good windows."

"I'll go right round for Kate, and we'll just call and see. I don't know in the least how to begin about it when I get there. I could do the _thing_, if I can make out the first understanding. I hope Kate won't be very Kate-y!"

She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her.

"You needn't be afraid. I'm bound to astonish somebody. Impertinence wouldn't do that. I shall strike out a new line. I'm the cook,--or the chambermaid,--which is it? that they haven't had any of before. I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table. You might discriminate, Bel! I know I've got a kind of a pert, snappy-sounding name,--just like the outside of me; but if you stop to look at it, it isn't _Saucebox_, but _Sensebox_! They're related, sometimes, and they ain't bad together; but yet, apart, they're different."


CHAPTER XXVII.

BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM.

Mrs. Frank Scherman's front door-bell rang. Of course she had to go down and open it herself. When she did so, she let in two girls whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or errand.

She did not know them; they might be anybody's daughters, yet they hardly looked like _technical_ "young ladies."

They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,--

"We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman. Miss Ledwith told us."

How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman? There was something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so far.

"Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,--or for either of you?" she asked, as she led the way up-stairs.

"I must bring you up where the children are," she said. "I cannot leave them."

They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the parlor. The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs. Scherman's own. There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor. Baby Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed.

"You see, this is the family,--except Mr. Scherman. I want two good, experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in the nursery. I say two for general work, because I want some things equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion. Do you want places for yourselves?"

She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility. These girls did not look much like it. There was no half-suspicious, half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet. It was time for it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves. Why didn't they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and lips that moved as little as possible,--"What wages, mum?" or "What's the conveniences--or the privileges--mum?"

Bel Bree had got her arm round little Sinsie, who had crept up to her side inquisitively; and Kate was making a funny face over her shoulder at Marmaduke, alternately with the pleased attentive glance she gave to his pretty young mother and her speaking.

"Yes'm," Bel answered. "We want places. We are sewing-girls. We have lost our work by the fire, and we were getting tired of it before. We have made up our minds to try families. We want a real place to live, you see. And we want to go together, so as to make our own place. We mightn't like things just as they happened, where there was others."

Mrs. Scherman's own face lighted up afresh. This was something that did not happen every day. She grew cordial with a pleased surprise. "Do you think you could? Do you know about housework, about cooking?"

"It's very good of you to put it in that way," said Kate Sencerbox. "We just do know _about_ it, and perhaps that's all, at present. But we're Yankees, and we _mean_ to know."

"And you would like to experiment with me?"

"Well, it wouldn't be altogether experiment, from the very beginning," said Bel. "I'm sure I can make good bread, and tea, and toast, and broil chickens or steaks; I can stew up sauces, I can do oysters. I can make a _splendid_ huckleberry pudding! We had one every Sunday all last August."

"Where?" asked Asenath, gravely.

"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire," said Bel, simply.

Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle quieted in her eyes.

"I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently. "This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen: and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little children!"

Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that there might be doubts as to her service suiting them.

"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox.

"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully, and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before Thursday morning."

"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate.

"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't hold our breaths till Thursday."

"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere," said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, doesn't she?"

"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now."

Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering.

Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up?

She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings.

Kate spoke