Real Folks Part 8

Mrs. Ledwith's nerves had extended since we saw her as a girl; they did not then go beyond the floating ends of her blue or rose-colored ribbons, or, at furthest, the tip of her jaunty laced sunshade; now they ramified,--for life still grows in some direction,--to her chairs, and her china, and her curtains, and her ruffled pillow-shams. Also, savingly, to her children's "suits," and party dresses, and pic-nic hats, and double b.u.t.ton gloves. Savingly; for there is a leaven of grace in mother-care, even though it be expended upon these. Her friend, Mrs. Inchdeepe, in Helvellyn Park, with whom she dined when she went shopping in Boston, had _nothing_ but her modern improvements and her furniture. "My house is my life," she used to say, going round with a Canton c.r.a.pe duster, touching tenderly carvings and inlayings and gildings.

Mrs. Megilp was spending the day with Laura Ledwith; Glossy was gone to town, and thence down to the sea-sh.o.r.e, with some friends.

Mrs. Megilp spent a good many days with Laura. She had large, bright rooms at her boarding-house, but then she had very gristly veal pies and thin tapioca puddings for dinner; and Mrs. Megilp's const.i.tution required something more generous. She was apt to happen in at this season, when Laura had potted pigeons. A little bird told her; a dozen little birds, I mean, with their legs tied together in a bunch; for she could see the market wagon from her window, when it turned up Mr. Ledwith's avenue.

Laura had always the claret pitcher on her dinner table, too; and claret and water, well-sugared, went deliciously with the savory stew.

They were up-stairs now, in Laura's chamber; the bed and sofa were covered with silk and millinery; Laura was looking over the girls'

"fall things;" there was a smell of sweet marjoram and thyme and cloves, and general richness coming up from the kitchen; there was a bland sense of the goodness of Providence in Mrs. Megilp's--no, not heart, for her heart was not very hungry; but in her eyes and nostrils.

She was advising Mrs. Ledwith to take Desire and Helena's two green silks and make them over into one for Helena.

"You can get two whole back breadths then, by piecing it up under the sash; and you _can't_ have all those gores again; they are quite done with. Everybody puts in whole breadths now. There's just as much difference in the _way_ of goring a skirt, as there is between gores and straight selvages."

"They do hang well, though; they have such a nice slope."

"Yes,--but the stripes and the seams! Those tell the story six rods off; and then there _must_ be sashes, or postillions, or something; they don't make anything without them; there isn't any finish to a round waist unless you have something behind."

"They wore belts last year, and I bought those expensive gilt buckles. I'm sure they used to look sweetly. But there! a fas.h.i.+on doesn't last nowadays while you're putting a thing on and walking out of the house!"

"And don't put in more than three plaits," pursued Mrs. Megilp, intent on the fate of the green silks. "Everything is gathered; you see that is what requires the sashes; round waists and gathers have a queer look without."

"If you once begin to alter, you've got to make all over," said Mrs.

Ledwith, a little fractiously, putting the scissors in with unwilling fingers. She knew there was a good four days' work before her, and she was quick with her needle, too.

"Never mind; the making over doesn't cost anything; you turn off work so easily; and then you've got a really stylish thing."

"But with all the ripping and remodelling, I don't get time to turn round, myself, and _live_! It is all fall work, and spring work, and summer work and winter work. One drive rushes pell-mell right over another. There isn't time enough to make things and have them; the good of them, I mean."

"The girls get it; we have to live in our children," said Mrs.

Megilp, self-renouncingly. "I can never rest until Glossy is provided with everything; and you know, Laura, I _am_ obliged to contrive."

Mrs. Megilp and her daughter Glaucia spent about a thousand dollars a year, between them, on their dress. In these days, this is a limited allowance--for the Megilps. But Mrs. Megilp was a woman of strict pecuniary principle; the other fifteen hundred must pay all the rest; she submitted cheerfully to the Divine allotment, and punctually made the two ends meet. She will have this to show, when the Lord of these servants cometh and reckoneth with them, and that man who has been also in narrow circ.u.mstances, brings his nicely kept talent out of his napkin.

Desire Ledwith, a girl of sixteen, spoke suddenly from a corner where she sat with a book,--

"I do wonder who '_they_' are, mamma!"

"Who?" said Mrs. Ledwith, half rising from her chair, and letting some breadths of silk slide down upon the floor from her lap, as she glanced anxiously from the window down the avenue. She did not want any company this morning.

"Not that, mamma; I don't mean anybody coming. The 'theys' that wear, and don't wear, things; the theys you have to be just like, and keep ripping and piecing for."

"You absurd child!" exclaimed Mrs. Ledwith, pettishly. "To make me spill a whole lapful of work for that! They? Why, everybody, of course."

"Everybody complains of them, though. Jean Friske says her mother is all discouraged and worn out. There isn't a thing they had last year that won't have to be made over this, because they put in a breadth more behind, and they only gore side seams. And they don't wear black capes or cloth sacks any more with all kinds of dresses; you must have suits, clear through. It seems to me 'they' is a nuisance.

And if it's everybody, we must be part, of it. Why doesn't somebody stop?"

"Desire, I wish you'd put away your book, and help, instead of asking silly questions. You can't make the world over, with 'why don'ts?'"

"I'll _rip_," said Desire, with a slight emphasis; putting her book down, and coming over for a skirt and a pair of scissors. "But you know I'm no good at putting together again. And about making the world over, I don't know but that might be as easy as making over all its clothes, I'd as lief try, of the two."

Desire was never cross or disagreeable; she was only "impracticable," her mother said. "And besides that, she didn't know what she really did want. She was born hungry and asking, with those sharp little eyes, and her mouth always open while she was a baby.

'It was a sign,' the nurse said, when she was three weeks old. And then the other sign,--that she should have to be called 'Desire!'"

Mrs. Megilp--for Mrs. Megilp had been in office as long ago as that--had suggested ways of getting over or around the difficulty, when Aunt Desire had stipulated to have the baby named for her, and had made certain persuasive conditions.

"There's the pretty French turn you might give it,--'Desiree.' Only one more 'e,' and an accent. That is so sweet, and graceful, and distinguished!"

"But Aunt Desire won't have the name twisted. It is to be real, plain Desire, or not at all."

Mrs. Megilp had shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, of course it can be that, to christen by, and marry by, and be buried by. But between whiles,--people pick up names,--you'll see!"

Mrs. Megilp began to call her "Daisy" when she was two years old.

n.o.body could help what Mrs. Megilp took a fancy to call her by way of endearment, of course; and Daisy she was growing to be in the family, when one day, at seven years old, she heard Mrs. Megilp say to her mother,--

"I don't see but that you've all got your _Desire_, after all. The old lady is satisfied; and away up there in Hanover, what can it signify to her? The child is 'Daisy,' practically, now, as long as she lives."

The sharp, eager little gray eyes, so close together in the high, delicate head, glanced up quickly at speaker and hearer.

"What old lady, mamma, away up in Hanover?"

"Your Aunt Desire, Daisy, whom you were named for. She lives in Hanover. You are to go and see her there, this summer."

"Will she call me Daisy?"

The little difficulty suggested in this question had singularly never occurred to Mrs. Ledwith before. Miss Desire Ledwith never came down to Boston; there was no danger at home.

"No. She is old-fas.h.i.+oned, and doesn't like pet names. She will call you Desire. That is your name, you know."

"Would it signify if she thought you called me Daisy?" asked the child frowning half absently over her doll, whose arm she was struggling to force into rather a tight sleeve of her own manufacture.

"Well, perhaps she might not exactly understand. People always went by their names when she was a child, and now hardly anybody does.

She was very particular about having you called for her, and you _are_, you know. I always write 'Desire Ledwith' in all your books, and--well, I always _shall_ write it so, and so will you. But you can be Daisy when we make much of you here at home, just as Florence is Flossie."

"No, I can't," said the little girl, very decidedly, getting up and dropping her doll. "Aunt Desire, away up in Hanover, is thinking all the time that there is a little Desire Ledwith growing up down here.

I don't mean to have her cheated. I'm going to went by my name, as she did. Don't call me Daisy any more, all of you; for I shan't come!"

The gray eyes sparkled; the whole little face scintillated, as it were. Desire Ledwith had a keen, charged little face; and when something quick and strong shone through it, it was as if somewhere behind it there had been struck fire.

She was true to that through all the years after; going to school with Mabels and Ethels and Graces and Ediths,--not a girl she knew but had a pretty modern name,--and they all wondering at that stiff little "Desire" of hers that she would go by. When she was twelve years old, the old lady up in Hanover had died, and left her a gold watch, large and old-fas.h.i.+oned, which she could only keep on a stand in her room,--a good solid silver tea-set, and all her spoons, and twenty-five shares in the Hanover Bank.

Mrs. Megilp called her Daisy, with gentle inadvertence, one day after that. Desire lifted her eyes slowly at her, with no other reply in her face, or else.

"You might please your mother now, I think," said Mrs. Megilp.

"There is no old lady to be troubled by it."

"A promise isn't ever dead, Mrs. Megilp," said Desire, briefly. "I shall keep our words."