A Letter of Credit Part 67

Mrs. Busby and her daughter were in the sitting room up stairs. Rotha had knocked, modestly, and as she went in they both lifted up their heads and looked at her, with a long look of survey. Rotha had come quite up to them before her aunt spoke.

"Well, Rotha,--so it is you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have you come to see me at last?"

"Yes, ma'am. Mrs. Mowbray said you wished it."

"What made you choose to-day particularly?"

"Nothing. Mrs. Mowbray said--"

"Well, go on. What did Mrs. Mowbray say?"

"She said you wanted to have me come, some day, and she thought I had better do it to-day."

"Yes. Did she give no reason?"

"No. At least--"

"At least what?"

Rotha had no skill whatever in prevarication, nor understood the art.

Nothing occurred to her but to tell the truth.

"Mrs. Mowbray said a thing was more graceful that was done promptly."

The slightest possible change in the set of Mrs. Busby's lips, the least perceptible air of her head, expressed what another woman might have told by a snort of disdain. Mrs. Busby's manner was quite as striking, Rotha thought. Her own anger was rising fast.

"O, and I suppose she is teaching you to do things gracefully?" said Antoinette. "Mamma, the idea!"

"It did not occur to her or you that I might like to see my niece occasionally?" said Mrs. Busby.

Rotha bit her lips and succeeded in biting down the answer.

"We have not grown very graceful _yet_," Antoinette went on. "It is usually thought civilized to answer people."

"You had better take off your things," Mrs. Busby said. "You may lay them up stairs in your room."

"Is there any reason which makes this an inconvenient day for me to be here?" Rotha asked before moving to obey this command.

"It makes no difference. The proper time for putting such a question, if you want to do things _gracefully_, is before taking your action, while the answer can also be given gracefully, if unfavourable."

Rotha went slowly up stairs, feeling that or any other place in the house better than the room where her aunt was. She went to her little cold, cheerless, desolate-looking, old room. How she had suffered there! how thankful she was to be in it no more! how changed were her circ.u.mstances!

Could she not be good and keep the peace, this one day? She had purposed to be very good, and calm, like Mr. Digby; and now already she felt as if a bunch of nettles had been drawn all over her. What an unmanageable thing was this temper of hers. She went down stairs slowly and lingeringly. The two looked at her again as she entered the room; now that her cloak was off, the new dress came into view.

"Where did you get that dress, Rotha?" was her aunt's question.

"Mrs. Mowbray got it for me."

"Does she propose to send me the bill by and by?"

"Of course not! Aunt Serena, Mrs. Mowbray never does mean things."

"H'm! What induced her then to go to such expense for a girl she never saw before?"

"I suppose she was sorry for me," said Rotha, with her heart swelling.

"Sorry for you! May I ask, why?"

"You know how I was dressed, aunt Serena; and you know how the other girls in school dress."

"I know a great many of them have foolish mothers, who make themselves ridiculous by the way they let their children appear. It is a training of vanity. I should not have thought Mrs. Mowbray would lend herself to such nonsense."

"But you do not think Antoinette has a foolish mother?" Rotha could not help saying. Mrs. Busby's daughter was quite as much dressed as the other girls. That she ought not to have made that speech, Rotha knew; but she made it. So much satisfaction she must have. It remained however completely ignored.

"Who made your dress?" Mrs. Busby went on.

"A dress-maker. One of the ladies went with me to have it cut."

"What did you do Christmas?" Antoinette inquired. In reply to which, Rotha gave an account of her visit to the Old Coloured Home.

"Just like Mrs. Mowbray!" was Mrs. Busby's comment. "She has no discretion."

"Why do you say that, aunt Serena?"

"Such an expenditure of money for nothing. What good would a little tea and a little tobacco do those people? It would not last more than a week or two; and then they are just where they were before."

"But it did not cost so very much," objected Rotha.

"Have you reckoned it up? Fifty or sixty half-pounds of tea, fifty or sixty pounds of sugar,--why, the sugar alone would be five or six dollars; and the tobacco, and the carriage hire; and I don't know what beside. All for nothing. That woman does not know what to do with money."

"But is it not something, to make so many poor people happy, if even only for a little while?"

"It would be a great deal better to give them something to do them good; a flannel petticoat, now, or a pair of warm socks. That would last. Or putting the money in the funds of the Inst.i.tution, where it would go to their daily needs. I always think of that."

"_Would_ it go to their daily needs? Some ladies got a cow for them once; and it just gave the matron cream for her tea, and they got no good of it."

"I don't believe that at all!" exclaimed Mrs. Busby. "I know the matron; Mrs. Bothers; I know her, for I recommended her myself. I have no idea she would be guilty of any such impropriety. It is just the gossip in the house, that Mrs. Mowbray has taken up in her haste and swallowed."

Rotha tried to hold her tongue. It was hard.

"Did Mrs. Mowbray give _you_ anything Christmas?" Antoinette asked, pus.h.i.+ng her inquiries. Rotha hesitated, but could find no way to answer without admitting the affirmative.

"What?" was the immediate next question; and even Mrs. Busby looked with ill-pleased eyes to hear Rotha's next words. It seemed like making her precious things common, to tell of them to these unkind ears. Yet there was no help for it.

"She gave me a travelling hand-bag."