The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) by Marshall P. Wilder (short books to read .TXT) 📗

it is simply terrible—callers underfoot wherever you stir. You must know something about it, with two daughters; so you can fancy it multiplied by two. Really, sometimes I get out of all patience—I haven't a corner of my house to myself on Sundays! But I realize it is the penalty for having four lively daughters, and I have to put up with it."

Mrs. Merritt, the visitor, had a gently worried air as she glanced from the twins, thin and big-boned, reading by the fire, to pretty, affected Amélie at the tea-table, and the apathetic Enid furtively watching the front steps from the bay window. Something in her expression seemed to imply a humble wonder as to what might constitute the elements of high popularity, since her two dear girls—

"Of course, mine have their friends," she asserted; it was an admission that perhaps the door-bell was not overworked. "I enjoy young life," she added.

"Oh, yes, in moderation!" Mrs. Baldwin laughed from the depths of the complacent prosperity that irradiated her handsome white hair and active brown eyes, her pleasant rosiness, and even her compact stoutness, suggesting strength rather than weight. "But since Enid became engaged, that means Harry all the time—there's my library gone; and with the other three filling both drawing-rooms[Pg 1977] and the reception-room, I have to take to the dining-room, myself! There they begin," she added, as Enid left the window and slipped out into the hall, closing the door after her. "Now we shall have no peace until Monday morning. You know how it is!"

Mrs. Merritt seemed depressed, and soon took her leave.

The twins, when they were left alone in the drawing-room, lifted their heads and exchanged long and solemn looks; then returned to their reading in silence. When it grew too dark by the fire, they carried their books to the bay window, but drew back as they saw a pale and puny youth with a retreating chin coming up the front steps.

"The rush has begun," murmured Cora.

"Amélie can have him," Dora returned. "Let's fly."

They retreated up-stairs and read peacefully until tea-time. The bell did not ring again. When they came down, Mrs. Baldwin eyed them irritably.

"Why don't you ask the Carryl boys in to Sunday tea some time? They will think you have forgotten them. And Mr. White and that nice Mr. Morton who lives with him—I am afraid you have offended them in some way. They used to be here all the time."

"They only came twice, and those were party calls," said Dora bluntly.

"My dear, you have forgotten," was the firm answer. "They were here constantly. I shall send them a line; I don't like to have them think we have gone back on them."

"Oh, I—I wouldn't," began Cora, but was put down with decision:

"When I need your advice, Cora, I will ask for it. Amélie, dear, you look tired; I am afraid you have had too much gaiety this afternoon."

"Oh, I love it! It's the breath of life to me," said[Pg 1978] Amélie rapturously. The twins again exchanged solemn looks and sat down to their tea in silence. Mrs. Baldwin attacked them peevishly at intervals; she was cross at Enid also, who had not kept Harry to supper, and preserved an indifferent silence under questioning. "When I was your age—!" was the burden of her speech.

"I must give a dance for you young people," she decided. "You need livening up."

"Oh, lovely!" exclaimed Amélie.

"We have not had one this winter—I don't know what I have been thinking about," Mrs. Baldwin went on with returning cheerfulness. "We won't ask more than a hundred. You must have a new frock, Amélie. Enid, how is your blue one?"

"Oh, all right," said Enid indifferently. Mrs. Baldwin turned to the twins, and found them looking frankly dismayed.

"Well, what is it now?" she exclaimed. "I am sure I try to give you as good times as any girls in town; not many mothers on my income would do half so much. And you sit looking as if you were going to execution!"

"We—we do appreciate it, mother," urged Cora, unhappily.

"But we aren't howling successes at parties," Dora added.

"Nonsense! You have partners to spare." Mrs. Baldwin was plainly angry. "No child of mine was ever a wallflower, nor ever will be. Never let me hear you say such a thing again. You would have twice the attention if you weren't always poking off by yourselves; and as it is, you have more than most girls. You frighten the men—they think you are proud. Show a little interest in them and see how pleased they will be!"

The twins looked dubious, and seized the first chance[Pg 1979] to escape. In their own room they confronted each other dismally.

"Of course they will ask us, in our own house; we won't have to sit and sit," said Cora with a sigh.

"But it's almost worse when they ask you for that reason," objected Dora.

"I know! I feel so sorry for them, and so apologetic. If mother would only let us go and teach at Miss Browne's; then we could show we were really good for something. We shouldn't have to shine at parties."

"We shouldn't have to go to them! Come on, let's do some Latin. I want to forget the hateful thing."

Cora got down the books and drew their chairs up to the student-lamp. "I know I shouldn't be such a stick if I didn't have to wear low neck," she said. "I am always thinking about those awful collar-bones, and trying to hold my shoulders so as not to make them worse."

"Oh, don't I know!" Dora had slipped on a soft red wrapper, and threw a blue one to her sister. When they were curled up in their big, cushioned chairs, they smiled appreciatively at each other.

"Isn't this nicer than any party ever invented?" they exclaimed. Dora opened her books with energy, but Cora sat musing.

"I dare say that somewhere there are parties for our kind," she said, finally. "Not with silly little chinless boys or popular men who are always trying to get away, but men who study and care about things—who go to Greece and dig ruins, for instance, or study sociology, and think more about one's mind than one's collar-bones."

Dora shook her head. "But they don't go to parties!"

"Both Mr. Morton and Mr. White do, sometimes," Cora suggested. "They aren't like the rest. I thought that[Pg 1980] tenement-house work they told us about was most interesting. But they would call if they wanted to," she added.

The twins in wrappers, bending over their books, had a certain comeliness. There was even an austere beauty in their wide, high foreheads, their fine, straight dark hair, their serious gray eyes and sensitive mouths, pensive but not without humor and sweetness. But the twins in evening dress, their unwilling hair flower-crowned and bolstered into pompadours, their big-boned thinness contrasted with Amélie's plump curves, their elbows betraying the red disks of serious application, were quite another matter, and they knew it. The night of the dance they came down-stairs with solemn, dutiful faces, and lifted submissive eyes to their mother for judgment. She was looking charmingly pretty herself, carrying her thick white hair with a humorous boldness, and her smiling brown eyes were younger than their gray ones.

"Very well, twinnies! Now you look something like human girls," she said gaily. "Run and have a beautiful time. Ah, Amélie, you little fairy! They will all be on their knees to you to-night. Where is Enid?"

"Nowhere near dressed, and she won't hurry," Amélie explained. "Oh, I am so excited, I shall die! What if no one asks me to dance!"

"Silly!" Mrs. Baldwin laughed. "I am only afraid of your dancing yourself to death. Ah, Mrs. Merritt, how good of you to come with your dear girls! And Mr. Merritt—this is better than I dared hope."

The rooms filled rapidly. Enid, after one languid waltz, disappeared with Harry and was not seen again till supper. Amélie flew from partner to partner, pouring streams of vivacious talk into patient masculine ears. The twins were dutifully taken out in turn and unfailingly brought back. Both Mr. White and Mr. Morton came,[Pg 1981] serious young men who danced little, and looked on more as if the affair were a problem in sociology than an entertainment. There were plenty of men, for Mrs. Baldwin's entertainments had a reputation in the matter of supper, music, and floors.

"After you've worked through the family, you can have a ripping old time," Cora heard one youth explain to another; a moment later he stood in front of her, begging the honor of a waltz. She felt no resentment; her sympathies were all with him. She looked up with gentle seriousness.

"You needn't, you know," she said. "Dora and I don't really expect it—we understand." He looked so puzzled that she added: "I overheard you just now, about 'working through the family.'"

He grew distressfully red and stammered wildly. Cora came at once to his rescue.

"Really, it's all right. We don't like parties, ourselves; only it is hard on mother to have such sticks of daughters, so we do our best. But we never mind when people don't ask us. Sometimes we almost wish they wouldn't."

The youth was trying desperately to collect himself. "What do you like, then?" he managed to ask.

"Oh, books, and the country, and not having to be introduced to people." She was trying to put him at his ease. "We really do like dancing: we do it better than you'd think, for mother made us keep at it. If only we didn't have to have partners and think of things to say to them!" She held out her hand, "Thank you ever so much for asking me, but I'd truly rather not." He wrung her hand, muttered something about "later, then," and fled, still red about the ears. Cora returned to her mother.

"Well, my dear, you seemed to be having a tremendous flirtation with that youth," laughed Mrs. Baldwin. "Such[Pg 1982] a hand-clasp at parting! Don't dance too hard, child." She turned to the half-dozen parents supporting her. "These crazy girls of mine will dance themselves to death if I don't keep an eye on them," she explained. "Amélie says, 'Mother, how can I help splitting my dances, when they beg me to?' I am always relieved when the dance is over and they are safe in bed—then I know they aren't killing themselves. The men have no mercy—they never let them rest an instant."

"I don't see Miss Enid about," suggested Mr. Merritt. "I suppose she and her Harry—!"

"Oh, I suppose so!" Mrs. Baldwin shook her head resignedly. "The bad child insists on being married in the spring, but I simply can not face the idea. What can I do to prevent it, Mrs. Merritt?"

"I am afraid you can't," smiled Mrs. Merritt. "We mothers all have to face that."

"Ah, but not so soon! It is dreadful to have one's girls taken away. I watch the others like a hawk; the instant a man looks too serious—pouf!—I whisk him away!"

Cora stood looking down, with set lips; a flush had risen in her usually pale cheeks. Dora, setting free an impatient partner, joined her and they drew aside.

"It does make me so ashamed!" said Cora, impulsively.

"I think mother really makes herself believe it," said Dora, with instant understanding.

They watched Amélie flutter up to their mother to have a bow retied, and stand radiant under the raillery, though she made a decent pretense of pouting. Her partner vanished, and Mrs. Baldwin insisted on her resting "for one minute," which ended when another partner appeared.

"Amélie is asked much more than we are, always," Cora suggested. Dora nodded at the implication.[Pg 1983]

"I know. I wonder why it never seems quite real. Perhaps because the devoted ones are such silly little men."

"Or seem to us so," Cora amended conscientiously. "Don't you wish we might creep up-stairs? Oh, me, here comes a man, just hating it! Which do you suppose he will—Oh, thank you, with pleasure, Mr. Dorr!" Cora was led away, and Dora slipped into the next room, that her mother might not be vexed at her partnerless state.

Mrs. Baldwin saw to it that the twins had partners for supper, and seated them at a table with half a dozen lively spirits, where they ate in submissive silence while the talk flowed over and about them. No one seemed to remember that they were there, yet they felt big and awkward, conspicuous with neglect, thoroughly forlorn. When they rose, the others moved off in a group, leaving them stranded. Mrs. Baldwin beckoned them to her table with her fan.

"Well, twinnies, yours was the noisiest table in the room," she laughed. "I was quite ashamed of you!