Kitty Canary Part 3

August is The Season in Twickenham Town, and there is hardly a family in it that doesn't have company or boarders, or whose sons and daughters don't come home for their holiday, and Miss Bettie Simcoe says it's perfectly scandalous, the flirting that goes on. Miss Bettie thinks anything matrimonial is close to scandalous, and she is continually raising her eyebrows and making a half moon of her mouth at what she says is the forwardness and freeness of present-day young people. Miss Susanna always has a crowded house in August. A Doctor Macafee and his wife and two daughters are here from Florida, and a Miss LeRoy from New Hampshire, and Judge Lampton and his wife from Alabama, and how she manages to put them away is known only to herself.

When I heard she was going to give up her room and take a tiny one in the garret I made up my mind I would have an awful dream that night, a regular nightmare, that would scare her to death and make her come in my room to see what was the matter. I had it and she came, and I told her I was subject to nightmares and ought not to sleep in a room by myself, though I hadn't mentioned it before, and I wished she would please sleep in mine with me and take the four-poster, which I thought gave me bad dreams, as I wasn't accustomed to such high beds. And if she would I would take the cot, as I liked cots much better. I am subject to nightmares, or anything else that is advisable to have at the proper time, and if I had known how many people were coming and that Miss Susanna was going to give up her room, I would have had one before, so she wouldn't think they had come on pretty sudden. But she is not apt to think. She is a darling little old lady, not brought up to think, and now too busy to do it, and she just works herself to death with her head up and a smile on her face, and doesn't realize she is spending all she makes in good things for the people who come here and nearly kill themselves eating. She never buys herself any clothes--that is, until Elizabeth has all she needs--and when I went up to my room yesterday to think out a way of getting that lavender satin for Miss Araminta, another thought came into my head, which was a black satin for Miss Susanna.

Feelings are things one has to be awfully careful about in Twickenham Town, and not for a billion dollars put in my pocket would I hurt anybody's here, and I couldn't let Miss Araminta or Miss Susanna think for a moment that their dresses were not all right, and how to get them new ones I couldn't imagine. I started to pray about it, and then I remembered I was in an awful hurry and it would be better to get to work, and, going over to the bureau, I opened its top drawer, and there looking up at me was my bank-book lying on a pile of handkerchiefs.

Father had put a very respectable sum of money in the Twickenham bank for me and told me to use it whenever I could do it in the right way, and he would trust me to find the right way; but though I had tried to get rid of some of it, there were few opportunities (so it wouldn't be manifest, I mean), and now one popped right up in my face.

For fear it might pop out again I ran downstairs as quick as I could, and, seeing Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta were by themselves, I began to talk about the Pettigrew children and what they had told me they wanted Santa Claus to bring them Christmas. And that reminded me suddenly that Christmas would soon be here, and I told them that in August I always began to think about what to get Mother and Aunt Celeste, who were my chief Christmas worries, and I wondered if they thought I could get something in Twickenham that I could take back with me. I felt, as I talked, that I was on a tight rope forty feet in the air and mighty little to balance myself with, but I managed to put in words what I wanted to say, and like little angels they fell in and never dreamed I had thought the thing out before I spoke.

I told them that Mother and Aunt Celeste had much more than they needed in life, and it was hard to get anything new and different for them, as there were so many to give them presents, and that I liked to get something odd if I could. The things they were crazy about were old silver and old jewelry, especially old settings, and it was hard to find them in our town, and I wondered if they could help me get a piece of silver like one of Miss Susanna's pitchers for Mother, and a set of sapphires like Miss Araminta's for Aunt Celeste. Also I said I didn't want to trouble them and I hoped they wouldn't mind my asking them.

Miss Araminta said no indeed, she didn't mind, and that she had got into the state of mind Miss Virginia Hill was in, and she wasn't going to keep on keeping a lot of things that were no use just because they had belonged to long-dead grandmothers. And while she wouldn't go as far as Miss Virginia, who would sell every ancestor she had for a million dollars, she would part with some other things for much less, and if I wanted to buy the sapphire set (pin and ear-rings) she would be glad to sell them. She would have to tell me, though, they had been her great-grandmother's, and not her great-great's, as the pearls were, and that she would take forty-five dollars for them, and if that was too much she would take forty.

I almost lost my breath at her good sense, not expecting it, but I told her it would be cheating if I paid less than seventy-five for them (I had calculated that it would take about that to get the lavender satin with things to match), and if she would get them for me I would take them right away, and I was awfully obliged to her, as it would be such a relief to get Aunt Celeste off my mind. I admitted I didn't always pay as much as seventy-five for her present (I usually give her a five-dollar one which Mother pays for), but Father wanted me to bring her something quaint from Twickenham if I could find it, and he would be delighted to know of the sapphires.

I fiddled along about other things for a moment or two and then I asked Miss Susanna if she would think me a very piggy person to want to buy one of those precious old silver pitchers of hers, as Mother would love so to have one of that pattern (Mother had never mentioned it, but I knew she would long for one of that pattern if she could see it), and I waited with terrible anxiousness in my heart and a hot face for her answer. Miss Susanna's got a lovely pinky color, and for a moment she didn't say anything, and then Miss Araminta spoke for her and showed more sensibleness than I thought was in her.

"Why don't you, Susanna?" she said, and nodded at her. They are first cousins and very good friends. "Why don't you let the child have one of those old pitchers? You have too much silver, anyhow, and with servants of the present day any sort of silver is too great a burden to be borne, much less ancestral sort. Young people want to buy their own things, and reverence for the past is a thing of the past; and besides, you have no one to leave yours to except some one who won't appreciate it. Why don't you let her have it?"

"I would be glad for her to have it. Glad to help her out with her Christmas difficulties, but"--Miss Susanna bit her lip and the pink in her face became rose--"I have never done anything of this sort, and it does not seem just right. I would be pleased for her mother to have one of the pitchers. In a sense they are connected with her family as our great-great-great-grandmothers were the same, and--"

"Oh, you precious person!" I jumped up and took Miss Susanna in my arms and whirled around the room with her. I was afraid she would get on the grandparent subject, and I didn't want to hear it. To head her off I gave her a squeeze and a skip or two and then I sat her down and kissed her, and asked her if she thought seventy-five dollars was enough for the pitcher, and if so I would get the checks while Miss Araminta got the sapphires. And before they had time to change their minds their things were mine and my money (Father's) was theirs, and we were all a little more excited than we were willing to admit.

CHAPTER XVI

They are in my trunk, the two Christmas presents, and we have had a grand time, Miss Araminta and Miss Susanna and I, buying their party dresses and things, and it is as true as Scripture that at times there is nothing better for the soul than pretty clothes for the body. And nothing so chirps up a woman as to have on becoming ones that fit and are fresh and make her feel she can walk across the floor without wishing she had a shawl on. The way Miss Araminta has bloomed out is as amazing as a moon-plant. And Miss Susanna has such a pleased smile on her boarder-tired face that I have been up in the air just from looking at her, and the best time I've ever had in my life has been in taking charge of their money and spending it for them. The way they agreed to get the dresses was this:

I told them it would be awfully exciting to have a secret and spring a surprise on Mrs. General Gaines and Miss Bettie Simcoe and a few others in town, and if they were willing I would design a dress for each of them and Miss Fannie Cross would make the dresses, which would be of a kind to suit their particular styles, and they could have them for the party on the 17th. And if they didn't get them at once something would happen to make them spend the money and it would be gone and they no better off than before. And I mentioned that there was the loveliest piece of black charmeuse at Mr. Peter Smith's, and that he was expecting a piece of lavender satin on Thursday. I had been to see Mr.

Peter and the lavender was ordered before I told them it was coming.

Also a few other things had been ordered by wire, I going with him to the telegraph-office to see him do it, being afraid to trust his memory, which, like his methods, is right put-offy. Also I told them there would be no time to hesitate. They got so fl.u.s.trated at being managed and so dazed by the pictures I showed them of the dresses I had drawn that they were lambs, perfect lambs. They let me do everything I told them ought to be done.

It was a real relief to them to have some one go ahead and decide things and not give them time to think whether they should do this or do that, or whether they had not better spend the money some other way.

Miss Susanna said, feebly, something about the roof needing to be fixed, and that the cellar ought to have a new floor, but I told her it would be sacrilegious to put a great-grandmother's silver pitcher on the roof or in the cellar, and that it would mortify her heavenly ancestors to know such a thing was being done, and I was surprised at her mentioning it. The only suitable way in which it would be proper to use the pitcher was in something personal, and as I was afraid Mr.

Peter Smith would sell the satin, it was so lovely and only a little more than enough for a dress, I had told him to put it aside and I had to let him know that afternoon if it was wanted. And another thing I told her was that all her life other people had been getting her share of nice things, and practicalities had eaten up everything pretty she had wanted for years, and there was an end to making over, and that she owed it to memories of the past to have a new dress for herself and not let all the newness always appear on a certain person's back just because that certain person happened to be young. Uncle Henson would be at the door with the carriage at four o'clock, I told her, to take us down-town, and she must be ready in time, as there was a good deal to do. I wouldn't take a mint of money for the look that came in her face as I talked. I have put it away for low-down days.

As for Miss Araminta--I wish I could write a book and put Miss Araminta Armstrong in it. If the lady who wrote _Cranford_ had known her she would have put her in, and it is a loss to literature that no one can do again for little places and the Miss Aramintas of life what the _Cranford_ writer did. She has told me right much about herself, and I don't smile any more, even to myself, as I couldn't help doing at first in the dark when I was so afraid I would roll on the floor and whoop that I had to hold on to my chair with both hands. It is still funny to hear her tell of her beaux who never quite came to the point, and who were always s.n.a.t.c.hed away at the critical moment by a jealous-minded person who was close kin but whose name she never mentions. But it isn't as funny as it used to be. It's queer how much tragedy there is in the comic things of life. Ever since she was born Miss Araminta has been a pieced-and-patched-up person, and never once has she had everything new and to match at the same time. When I told her about some of the things that must go with the lavender satin she began to cry a little and said she oughtn't to let herself think about indulgences of that sort, as her poor brother was not in business at present and needed--

"Now look here, Miss Araminta," I said. "The first preparation you have got to make for the party is to forget you have a brother and remember your own body, which needs attention. It has come down from a long line of people who took very good care to put expensive things on theirs. And another thing you ought to remember is that if your brother didn't know he could call on you every time he lost his job--"

"My brother has never had a job." Miss Araminta sat up at once and wiped her eyes and left, unknowing, a streak of white down a pink cheek that turned purple at the word "job." "He has been unfortunate in not being able to retain certain positions he has once held, but his health--"

"Rats!" It came out without thinking, but when a man has a worn-out wife and seven children and won't do this and won't do that because it is beneath his lordly ideas of what a well-born person should do, it is better for me not to speak of him out loud. I told Miss Araminta she must excuse me, but there were some sorts of men I couldn't mention with safety and I thought "job" was a very good word, and I would rather have one that paid a dollar a day than borrow money to pay my bills, and that I'd sweep the streets before I would sit down and do nothing if I had a wife and seven children. The look on her face I tucked away, too, to take out on days when there isn't a thing in sight to laugh at. She can't help it, Miss Araminta can't. She was born that way and, not being an evoluting kind, words are wasted when it comes to trying to make her see what she doesn't want to see. There is a lot of b.u.mmy rot in this world which has nothing to do with the proper kind of pride, and it's my belief we are mighty apt to fill the place in life we are fitted to fill. If a dollar a day is all I am worth it is all I ought to get until I make myself worth more. Of course if people are feeble-minded that's a different thing. When they are, the State ought to step in and take charge of them in order to protect itself, Jess says, and also she says feeble-mindeders always have the largest families, and even a feeble-minded person knows that is not right.

I didn't mean to hurt Miss Araminta's feelings, but that brother of hers is a snuff-the-moon old sn.o.b, and I was determined he shouldn't get a penny of that sapphire money if I could help it, and I told Miss Araminta a few firm facts. After a while she blew her nose and wiped her eyes and I had no further trouble. But I was afraid to trust either her or Miss Susanna with their money, so I took the checks back and told them it was better for me to keep them, as money had such a queer way of disappearing. Any that was handy was used when needed, and when the time came to get the things the money was for there might not be any to get. They handed it back as meek as little lambs.

CHAPTER XVII

Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta are crazy about the designs I have sketched for their dresses, and so is Miss Fannie Cross. It is the only talent I have, designing clothes is, and if I ever have to earn my living I am going to be "Katrine" and have a shop on a fine street and charge like old glory for my things. That will make them wanted, and those who think a gown is desirable according to its price can pay enough to make up for those who can't pay much, and I'll have a great time charging the payers. I am going to get ready to earn a living, anyhow, because every girl ought to, Fathers or Billys notwithstanding.

Life is a very up-and-downy thing, and it is good to know, should it get down, that you can give it a lift up yourself and not have to wait for a shover.

It was a private matinee, watching Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta buy the things that Mr. Peter Smith had ordered and which they couldn't understand his having in stock. The tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and linings and gloves and stockings were exactly what was needed and they couldn't get over how fortunate it was. They paid for them themselves, as I had handed their money to them when we started out, holding back only enough to pay Miss Fannie Cross; but though they took some time to do the buying, and felt and smoothed everything they bought and put the satin to their cheeks to be sure of its quality, and looked at each other every now and then as if what they were doing was wicked, perhaps, but fearfully enjoyable, still in two days everything was at Miss Fannie's, and it was then I had to be awfully firm with Miss Araminta.

There are some things some women can never take in, and one is that an old sheep should never dress lamb fashion. It was all Miss Fannie (she's a corking-good dressmaker for a small place) and I could do to hold Miss Araminta down when it came to colors, and the cut of her skirt, and some tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs she wanted to put on the waist. She thinks she loves lavender, but Joseph's coat would have been a colorless piece of apparel beside her dress if we finally hadn't sat on her and told her certain things couldn't be done. She was crazy to pile on a bunch of ancestral lace, yellow and dowdy; but we told her not much, told her freshness and daintiness suited her style much better, and she wasn't old enough to emphasize ancestral lace, and she blushed and gave in.

But nothing would have made her do it if Miss Fannie hadn't thought to throw out the age-line. She caught on and agreed, and after that we did not have a great deal of trouble.

Miss Susanna was a little crankier than I thought she was going to be, and wanted a practical dress that she could wear anywhere at any time, and we had to argue with her a good deal. I told her a train was the thing for her, and I intended to walk behind her the night of the party and keep everybody back far enough to see how grand she looked. When a woman is sixty-six and pretty worn, short skirts for evenings are not impressive, and, though we didn't mention age, we said finally she owed it to her mother's memory to dress in a style suitable to the position into which she had been born, and that settled it. She's the real thing, Miss Susanna is. She doesn't have to play a part.

I had told Miss Fannie on the quiet that the price of making the dresses would be doubled if she would have them ready for the 17th of August, and they were ready. Miss Araminta and Miss Susanna thought it was a bad example to set, as it might not be just to the other Twickenham-Towners to pay more than they could pay, and it stuck Miss Araminta pretty deep to hand out more than was necessary. But I told her it was an emergency operation and that kind always came high. And also I told them that Miss Fannie charged entirely too little for her work, and it was poor religion to go to church on Sunday and sing praises to G.o.d and underpay a poor little dressmaker. They said they supposed it was, but I don't think they thought it very reverential in me to speak of G.o.d in connection with a dress-maker and what she got for sewing. I gave each one a list of their expenditures, with the cost of everything on it, and each had a little left over after getting their slippers and some sachet powder and a bottle of violet-water apiece, and, after all, that brother of Miss Araminta's got a little of the sapphire money. But it wasn't much. I saw to that. It's been awfully exciting in Twickenham lately.

The event of the year is the MacLean party and the best of everything is saved for it, and in itself it makes every tongue in town talk until you wonder why tongues are the only things that never tire, and then, lo and behold! two days before it came off back comes Elizabeth Hamilton Carter, bringing her beau behind her, and off start the same tongues on a new lap and no breath taken in between.

I wish Billy could see it, the thing Elizabeth brought back! He wears men's clothes (very good ones) and he is twenty-seven years old, and has large hands and feet and ears and a feeble mustache, but as a man he isn't much. He looks like a hatter and is seemingly dumb, and he blinks his eyes so continually that no one can tell their color. Also he bites his finger-nails. I advised Elizabeth to get a beau _pro tem._, but I didn't mean anything like that. If she wants jealousy to bring Whythe back to her she should keep something on hand to be jealous of. Elizabeth has an iron will and a copper determination, but about as much judgment as a horse-fly.

Miss Bettie Simcoe's eyebrows haven't come down good since the night the _engagees_ arrived. She has an explanation for the situation, as she calls it, there never yet being a situation she couldn't explain, and she says the engagement is a piece of management on the part of Elizabeth's aunt on her father's side, the aunt she has been visiting.

This aunt is society crazy, and, knowing you can't keep step in society without money, she arranged the whole thing. Anyhow, Elizabeth has a gorgeous ring and a magnificent pin, and of course she ought to be happy if diamonds and things mean happiness, but she isn't happy, and for the first time since I met her I can't make her out. Before I know it I am going to feel sorry for her, and then good-by to in-loveness for me! I have very little sense at times, and no hold-outness at all when certain things come to pa.s.s.

Elizabeth still loves Whythe. Engaged or not to some one else, she still cares only for him. I don't want him. I wonder how it might be managed--getting them to take in how silly they have been. I believe I'll try and see if something can't be done. Watchful waiting may be all right in some cases, but I never cared for waiting. Milton says all things come to him who hustles while he waits. You get a move on, Kitty Canary, and see what you can do!

CHAPTER XVIII

The party is over. Everybody who is anybody was at it and we had a perfectly scrumptious time. I never saw so many good things to eat on a hot summer night in all my life, but the heat didn't affect appet.i.tes, and Miss Kate Norris, who lives in the Wellington Home (memorial for a dead wife or a live conscience, I don't remember which), ate three platefuls of supper and three helpings of ice-cream.

She is fearfully ancestral and an awful eater, and also a sour remarker, and I stay out of her way, but that night I couldn't help seeing the way she made food disappear. No low-born person could have done it quicker.

It was a perfectly beautiful party. The two married daughters of Judge and Mrs. MacLean, who live in the city and always come home for August, were as dear and lovely as if they had never left old Twickenham Town, and their clothes were a liberal education to the stay-at-homers. They were well taken in by the latter, but the sensation of the evening was the arrival and appearance of My Girls, and--oh, my granny!--I was so excited I couldn't stand on both feet at once, and I had to get in a corner and put my back against the wall to keep from making movement.

When they came in the room there was a little hush, and then there were so many exclamations of surprise and admiration that I had to fan as hard as Mr. Willie Prince to keep down the blazing red in my face which was there from pride in the dear old darlings and not from heat. And I saw clearer than I had ever seen before that fine things behind one count a good deal, and ancestors of the right kind leave something to their descendants that comes out when needed, and at that party the desirable things came out.

They looked like pictures--Miss Susanna and Miss Araminta--for the prevailing modes, as Miss Araminta calls them, and which she loves so dearly and hits at but never touches, had not been paid very particular attention to, and the thing that suited each had been made for them.

They were as becoming to the dresses as the dresses to them.

Twickenham nearly lost its breath as they came into the long drawing-room of the MacLean house and walked through it after speaking to the receiving party, and I know now how a mother feels when her debutante daughters are a success. I will have more sympathy with Mother than I used to have, and I will try to behave myself and do the stunts all right for the first year. But she already knows I do not expect to keep on doing them. I have told her.

n.o.body can say again that women can't keep a secret, for not even Miss Bettie Simcoe, who knows what the Lord is going to do before He does it, had any idea of the dresses; and though I don't think she or Mrs.

General Gaines liked not being told, they were very nice about it and said much kinder things than I thought they were capable of saying.

And I really think Elizabeth was pleased also. She actually smiled when she saw her aunt come in with Miss Araminta. Smiles of late have been faint and feeble on the face of the affianced young lady, who isn't playing her part as a person with ancestors ought to play it.

She bounced her old beau and took unto herself a new one, and what I can't understand is, having done it, why she doesn't carry it off with a rip-roaring bluff that might fool even herself for a while. But Elizabeth isn't that sort. Everybody is talking about how miserable she looks. I'm afraid I put the beau idea in her head, and the idea has got her in a hole and she doesn't know how to get out of it. I wish Billy was here. He can get a person out of any sort of hole.

I went to the party with Whythe. He has been away for a week, and while away got a new dress suit, which, of course, he wore to the party and looked perfectly grand in it. I think his mother gave the suit to him, though he didn't say, but he was off attending to some business for her, and I'm sure he took it out in the new clothes. It would have been more sensible to have had his teeth fixed, or gotten three new ones, the rest being all right, but it was natural to prefer the suit, and much less painful. Whythe is never going to do anything disagreeable that he can keep from doing.

He was so nice the night of the party that I hadn't the courage to begin finding out the truth or untruth of what Mr. Willie Prince had mentioned as the reason of the rush he had been giving me, and as I don't believe Whythe has ever thought of Father's money, there was no need to be in a hurry to learn whether he had or not. I've had a jolly good time being in love with him, and being made love to, and as an experience it may come in when I begin to write my book. I always did want to know how many ways love can be made in, which, of course, I can never know, for there are as many ways, I guess, as there are men to make it, and the variations on the main theme are as infinitesimal as the tongues that tell the story. It is truly wonderful how differently the same words can be trimmed up and handed out, and I like the crescendoes and diminuendoes and shades of feeling which give emphasis and expression, as my music teacher says I must be careful of when playing. There is never going to be any crescendo or diminuendo business about Billy's love-making, and I might as well make up my mind to that in the beginning. It's going to be pure staccato with him--short and quick and soon over. But it will last forever, Billy's will. He isn't going to stand for foolishness about it when he starts, either. He has two more years at college and then he is going in his father's office.

I don't know what's the matter with Billy. I haven't had a letter from him for a week, or a single card. He must be crazy. I've been so busy I have not written for ten days, and if I don't get a letter soon he won't get one from me for another ten. He can't expect me to do what he doesn't do, and besides, a man doesn't want what he gets too easy, even letters. I don't suppose he could be sick. If he was-- I am not going to let myself think sickness or automobile accidents or sliding off mountain peaks (they are in Switzerland now and Billy would get to the top of anything he started for or die trying). And though I say to myself forty times a day he is all right, I wake up at night and wonder if anything could be the matter. I am wondering all the time.