第51章

"YOU thought! I know what SHE must have thought.That she'd made a mistake and run afoul of an asylum for the feeble-minded.""Umph! I should have GOT feeble-minded if I'd had any more of that kind of talk.What made her ask if a sick woman like Comfort was 'in' and 'to home'? Couldn't be nowheres else, could she?""Rubbish! she meant could Mrs.Paine see folks, that's all.""See 'em! How you talk! She ain't blind.""Oh, my soul and body! She was tryin' to ask if she might make a call on Comfort.""Well then, why didn't she ask it; 'stead of wantin' to know if she was in?""That's the high-toned way TO ask, and you'd ought to have known it.""Humph! Do tell! Well, I ain't tony, myself.Don't have no chance to be in this house.Nothin' but work, work, work! tongue, tongue, tongue! for me around here.I'm disgusted, that's what Iam."

"YOU'RE disgusted! What about, me?"

I had listened to as much of this little domestic disagreement as Icared to hear.

"Wait a minute," I said."What is all this? Who has been here to see Mother?"Both answered at once.

"That Colton girl," cried Lute.

"That Mabel Colton," said Dorinda.

"Miss Colton? She has been here? this afternoon.""Um-hm," Dorinda nodded emphatically."She stayed in your ma's room 'most an hour.""'Twas fifty-three minutes," declared Lute."I timed her by the clock."And she fetched a great, big bouquet.Comfort says she--"I waited to hear no more, but went into Mother's room.The little bed chamber was fragrant with the perfume of flowers.A cluster of big Jacqueminot roses drooped their velvety petaled heads over the sides of the blue and white pitcher on the bureau.Mother loved flowers and I frequently brought her the old fashioned posies from Dorinda's little garden or wild blossoms from the woods and fields.

But roses such as these were beyond my reach now-a-days.They grew in greenhouses, not in the gardens of country people.

Mother did not move as I entered and I thought she was asleep.But as I bent over the roses she turned on the pillow and spoke.

"Aren't they beautiful, Roscoe?" she said.

"Yes," I answered."They are beautiful.""Do you know who brought them to me?"

"Yes, Mother.Lute told me."

"She did call, you see.She kept her word.It was kind of her, wasn't it?"I sat down in the rocking chair by the window.

"Well," I asked, after a moment, "what did she say? Did she condescend to pity her pauper neighbors?""Roscoe!"

"Did she express horrified sympathy and offer to call your case to the attention of her cousin in charge of the Poor Ward in the City General Hospital, like that woman from the Harniss hotel last summer?""Boy! How can you!"

"Oh, well; I am a jealous beast, Mother; I admit it.But I have not been able to bring you flowers like that and it galls me to think that others can.They don't deserve to have all the beautiful things in life, while the rest of us have none.""But it isn't her fault that she has them, is it? And it was kind to share them with us.""I suppose so.Well, what did she say to you? Dorinda says she was with you nearly an hour.What did you and she talk about? She did not offer charity, did she?""Do you think I should have accepted it, if she had? Roscoe, Ihave never seen you so prejudiced as you are against our new neighbors.It doesn't seem like you, at all.And if her father and mother are like Miss Mabel, you are very wrong.I like her very much.""You would try to like any one, Mother."

"I did not have to try to like her.And I was a little prejudiced, too, at first.She was so wealthy, and an only child; I feared she might be conceited and spoiled.But she isn't.""Not conceited! Humph!"

"No, not really.At first she seemed a trifle distant, and Ithought her haughty; but, afterward, when her strangeness and constraint had worn away, she was simple and unaffected and delightful.And she is very pretty, isn't she.""Yes."

"She told me a great deal about herself.She has been through Vassar and has traveled a great deal.This is the first summer since her graduation which she has not spent abroad.She and Italked of Rome and Florence.I--I told her of the month I spent in Italy when you were a baby, Roscoe.""You did not tell her anything more, Mother? Anything she should not know?""Boy!" reproachfully.

"Pardon me, Mother.Of course you didn't.Did she tell you why she called on us--on you, I mean?""Yes, in a way.I imagine--though she did not say so--that you are responsible for that.She and Nellie Dean seem to be well acquainted, almost friendly, which is odd, for I can scarcely think of two girls more different.But she likes Nellie, that is evident, and Nellie and George have told her about you and me.""I see.And so she was curious concerning the interesting invalid.

Probably anything even mildly interesting is a godsend to her, down here.Did she mention the Shore Lane rumpus?""Yes.Although I mentioned it first.It was plain that she could not understand your position in the matter, Roscoe, and I explained it as well as I could.I told her that you felt the Lane was a necessity to the townspeople, and that, under the circumstances, you could not sell.I told her how deeply you sympathized with her mother--""Did you tell her that?"

"Why, yes.It is true, isn't it?"

"Humph! Mildly so, maybe.What more did she say?""She said she thought she understood better now.I told her about you, Boy, and what a good son you had been to me.How you had sacrificed your future and your career for my sake.Of course Icould not go into particulars, at all, but we talked a great deal about you, Roscoe.""That must have been deliriously interesting--to her.""I think it was.She told me of your helping her home through the storm, and of something else you had not told me, Boy: of your bringing her and Mr.Carver off the flat in the boat that day.Why did you keep that a secret?""It was not worth telling."