Three pretty maids

While Connie and Persis waited after service to speak to Mrs. Dixon, the others walked on.

“Let us stand here in the vestibule,” said Connie, “and then we shall be sure not to miss her.” And they waited till Mrs. Dixon appeared. She was surprised and glad to see the girls, but looked a little puzzled when Persis told where she was stopping. “I wish you could spend part of your time with me,” she said, looking from one girl to another.

“Oh, I can’t spare her,” said Connie.

Mrs. Dixon smiled, but she looked thoughtful immediately after. “Couldn’t you both come and spend Saturday and Sunday with me?” she presently asked. Persis’s look of pleasure gave her answer, but Connie looked doubtful.

“I am sure your father would not object; and if Mrs. Steuart will consent, I shall be very glad to have you,” continued Mrs. Dixon.

“If Persis likes, I shall enjoy coming,” said Connie, “and I don’t think there will be any difficulty about the consent.”

In consequence Persis returned from church with a lighter heart, and felt that she could eat her Thanksgiving dinner with a real sense of gratitude since her stay at the Steuarts’ was to be shortened by two days.

“I will send the carriage for you early on Saturday,” Mrs. Dixon had said, and Persis counted the hours. There was an honest intention on the part of the Steuarts to make the girl have a good time, but the entertainment provided was of such a different character from that to which Persis was accustomed that she shrank from it. She wondered how people who pleaded poverty could afford to buy so much confectionery, and could put such an amount of trimming on their frocks. She had never been used to dressing conspicuously and sitting at a front window in order to attract attention, and make remarks on passers by; to laugh and smirk if a young man chanced to look up; to romp with casual callers, or to go from shop to shop for the mere purpose of seeing the crowd and getting into conversation with the clerks. She was so full of wonder at all this behavior that she made a clean breast of it to Mrs. Dixon as soon as an opportunity came.

“My dear,” said that lady, “I am so sorry it happened so. I wish your mother had written to me before you decided to go home with Connie. The Stewarts are not persons your parents would choose for your associates. I do not mean that they are bad people. The girls are simply silly, brainless creatures, who err because they have never been used to refined influences. Poor little Connie should have better surroundings. She is the daughter of a dear school-mate of mine who died when Connie was scarcely more than a baby. Connie’s father married for his second wife a woman who was not his social equal. She has been very good to Connie in many ways, and while I regret the child’s environment, there is nothing much that can be done. I think her school association will help her, and I hope some day she will be a fine woman. She has a small fortune left by her mother which will educate her and give her a little income when she is through school. So she is not dependent upon her father. Help her all you can, Persis, without compromising yourself. It is a difficult case and one in which it is hard to do just right.”

Persis looked immensely relieved. “Oh, Mrs. Dixon,” she said, “you were so good to invite us here! I should have perished with homesickness if I had stayed there till Monday; and they really tried to be kind. I felt so ungrateful, and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

“I know, dear; it was a hard position for you. Now, we must try to do our best for Constance. I am so glad you find her companionable, and I hope some day she will prove worthy of the sweet woman who was her mother. Mere pride of birth is a small matter. No doubt the Stewarts point to as fine ancestry as you or I, but we cannot help making social distinctions, and although Mrs. Steuart may be an honest, well-intentioned woman, she does not rear her daughters as judiciously as your mother does hers; moreover, you are apt to meet at her house persons of whom your parents would not approve; so this must be your last visit there.”

“Oh, Mrs. Dixon, you are such a comfort,” returned Persis. “I am so glad not to give up Connie, for, I really like her, but I shall never again, never, insist upon carrying things with such a high hand. I was so indignant when Lisa suggested that I might make a mistake.”

“‘We are all poor critters,’” laughed Mrs. Dixon. “Where did you leave Connie?”

“Curled up in the library with a book.”

“Tell her we must get ready for a drive.” And Persis danced out of the room very happy that all difficult questions were explained.

“What are you reading, Con?” she asked, as she peeped into the quiet room.

“Oh, such a lovely book!” sighed Connie. “Isn’t it deliciously peaceful here, Persis? I mean to have just such a home when I grow up. I’m going to have shelves full of books, and an open fire, and a chair just like this,—it is a real sleepy hollow; and I’m going to have my bedroom facing the west, so I can always see the sunset, and all those pretty silver things Mrs. Dixon has on her dressing-bureau I’m going to have on mine.”

“What will Mrs. Dixon do?”

“I don’t mean I am going to have hers, goosey,—some just like them.”

Persis was balancing herself on the arm of a big chair. “Did you know that we are to go to the cricket club this afternoon?”

“No. Are we really?”

“Yes. Mrs. Dixon said we were to join Walter there; and we can play shuffleboard or roll tenpins or do anything like that if we choose. Isn’t it fine?”

“I should say so. I have always been wild to go into that club-house on the cricket grounds, and I never had a chance before this. I have watched the girls play tennis there and did so wish I belonged to the club.”

“Well, now’s your chance. Come, get ready.” And the two girls hastened up-stairs to prepare for the event.

“I wish I had a new coat,” said Persis; “but it was Lisa’s turn this winter. I don’t generally mind having hand-me-downs, except when I am away from home, and then I like to be spick and span from head to foot. Never mind, I have two dollars’ worth of elegance in the shape of a pair of fine new gloves that grandma gave me just before I came away. And I have a new hat; the Pigeon had to take mine. I believe, after all, I am going to be the shortest of the trio, and will have to wear Mell’s frocks in a year or two. Won’t that be horrid?”

“Who is the Pigeon?” asked Connie, laughing.

“Don’t you know? Mell. We call her that for fun, because she is given to turning in her toes; and we tell her that sometimes she stands on the curb as if she had just alighted there, and that she has a way of looking up and down the street as if she were making up her mind to which roof she would fly next; so we call her ‘the Pigeon.’ Lisa is called ‘Lady Dignity,’ or sometimes ‘Dig,’ for short.”

“And what do they call you?”

“Tommy,” replied Persis, laughing. “You can easily guess why. Come, I hear the carriage. Don’t you like Walter Dixon?”

“I never met him,” confessed Connie. “I have often met Dr. Dixon, and I like him, he is so jolly.”

“Walter is just like him,” Persis informed her; “so you’ll be sure to get along well with him.” And the girls started down-stairs to meet Mrs. Dixon, who was waiting for them in the hall.

They returned from their expedition in high spirits. The girls had acquitted themselves fairly well at the shuffleboard, which they thought fine fun, and Walter had shown them over the pretty club-house, and had kept them laughing all the way home by his flow of nonsense.

“Now, children,” Mrs. Dixon said, when, after a late dinner, all adjourned to the library, “what do you want to do,—read, play games, have some music, or what?”

“Let’s get up an impromptu play,” suggested Walter. “I am capable of taking half a dozen characters at once, and if one of the girls will help, we can have some fun.”

“I’d much rather be audience,” said Connie; “indeed I should.”

Persis’s eyes sparkled, for there was nothing she enjoyed more than just such a performance, which would give play to her imagination, and in which she could exercise her wit, and she nodded a ready assent when Walter looked at her inquiringly.

“Then Connie and I can keep each other company,” Mrs. Dixon said. “The doctor is a very uncertain quantity, and we can never depend upon having his society, although he may be in at any moment. You know, Walter, that you are welcome to any of the household possessions in reason, and you always have a pile of properties to draw upon, I know. He has a way of utilizing the most unusual articles,” she informed the girls, “so you need not be surprised at anything he may produce.”

Using the library as a stage, the players sent the audience to the adjoining room, and after many journeys to and from the stage were taken and sundry thuds were heard, the curtain rose upon the first scene. This discovered Persis as an old woman at a washtub, while Walter, as an antiquated specimen of rusticity, carried on a violent altercation with his partner upon the subject of taking summer boarders. The rosy Persis was such a very mirthful old woman, in spite of her queer cap and whitened hair, that the old man with the sheep-skin “chin-whiskers,” old straw hat, and dejected-looking appearance generally, was obliged to frown down her merriment continually, while Mrs. Dixon and Connie laughed till the tears came.

The next scene presented Walter as the boarder, who was also the villain of the play, and pretended to be scheming to win the affection of a country maid—represented by Persis—in order to gain possession of the property belonging to the old people whose daughter Persis was supposed to be. After a dramatic interview, in which the villain vowed vengeance upon an unfortunate individual named Willie, who was the lover of the country maid, Walter in a monologue planned how he should get rid of the simple-hearted Willie, and decided that he would shoot him while the two were out hunting together, pretending that it should be considered an accident. The dénouement came when, after a startling report, Walter staggered in bearing the form of his victim.

The appearance of the figure, far from causing tears from the audience, caused them to laugh uncontrolledly, for the cumbersome and unwieldy lay-figure which Walter had constructed out of brooms and pillows, dressed in a suit of old clothes, and surmounted with a false-face and a wig of astrachan cloth, was such a ludicrous object that Persis, as the broken-hearted maid, shook with laughter as she buried her face in her hands. She recovered, however, and her simulated agony over such a ridiculous-looking creature nearly upset even Walter’s gravity. So when the scene concluded with Persis propping up the luckless Willie and announcing in ecstatic tones that he still lived, while she gazed tenderly at the simpering false-face, such laughter ensued that the play was pronounced ended.

“My goodness! we’ve taken up nearly the whole evening,” exclaimed Persis. “I’m all tired out with my agonizing. Did I do well, Mrs. Dixon?”

“Remarkably so, considering the object of your devotion,” laughed Mrs. Dixon. “You are ready for some hot chocolate I hope. We’ll have it with some cake in the library. Where is Walter?”

“He has gone to remove his villany,” said Persis, laughing. “Did you ever see such an evil-looking wretch as he made of himself with that fierce black moustache?”

“Where did he get it?” asked Connie.

“It’s a piece of monkey fur,” replied Persis. “I think Walter is very ingenious. I do wish you lived nearer us, Mrs. Dixon, we could all have such good times together; just like one family, for Walter, being Basil’s cousin, would make him one of us.”

“I sometimes wish so, too,” returned Mrs. Dixon, “although we have many ties here, and Walter has some pleasant friends among his college-mates. I should be glad, however, if he had a sister. I think it would be better for him to be thrown more with nice girls, for, close friends as we two are, the society of young people is good for him, and I often think how pleasant it would have been for him if his little sister had lived, and they could have had the same circle of friends.”

“And we three Holmes girls have no brother,” said Persis. “Oh, yes; we count Basil and Porter as brothers now, so the family isn’t so one-sided as it used to be. I like Basil better than Porter, but they are both nice boys, and we all have lively times at home, I can tell you.”

Monday morning came all too soon, notwithstanding Persis’s homesick attack of Thanksgiving-day. “I have had such a good time,” she told Mrs. Dixon as she took her leave.

And yet she went back home in quite a subdued frame of mind.

“I am wild to hear what sort of a time you had,” said Lisa, on their way home from school, for an early train had given Connie and Persis barely time to reach school by nine o’clock.

“Oh, I had a nice time,” said Persis, rather vaguely.

Lisa looked at her. “You aren’t a bit enthusiastic.”

“I was so glad to see Mrs. Dixon,” returned Persis, with an increase of animation. “We had a lovely time at her house.”

“Mrs. Dixon? Oh, yes; of course, we all love to be with her. Did you go to her house?”

“I spent Saturday and Sunday there; so did Connie.”

“You did?” And Lisa looked curiously at her sister. “Perse, you’re hedging. Tell me straight out about the Steuarts.”

And Persis, too frank to conceal anything, told all.

“Then I was right,” declared Lisa, triumphantly. “You’ll believe me next time. I ought to know better, being older than you.”

“Well, I don’t care; Connie is a nice girl, and I am going to stand by her.”

“Of course,” rejoined Lisa, with her chin in the air.

Persis lost no time in relating her experiences to her mother, who listened thoughtfully. “Dear child,” she said. “I am so glad you had the penetration to see just what was wrong, and to shrink from joining in the actions you felt were not right. We withdraw ourselves from certain acquaintances because they are underbred, not because they are poor.”

“Annis Brown is poor.”

“Exactly, but she has a refined gentlewoman for a mother, who is, moreover, a Christian in every sense of the word. Even though she might occupy the most humble position in the world, Mrs. Brown would always be a lady, and her character would always distinguish her as one of God’s chosen ones, while poor Connie’s step-mother cannot have refined instincts, and must either be a weak woman or one lacking in delicate perception; otherwise she would not permit her daughters to make themselves conspicuous by their questionable behavior. Innocent amusement is one thing and a bold seeking for notice is another. I am rather glad, after all, Persis, that you have had your lesson while you are so young.”

“Oh, dear, mamsey, it is so good to get back,” said Persis, fondling her mother’s hand. “I forgot to take my soap, and that dreadful strong-scented stuff the Stewart girls used nearly made me ill.”

Mrs. Holmes laughed. “I am very glad you are so pleased to get back to your soap.”

Persis laughed too. “Oh, mamsey, that was a most random sort of a remark. I wish there was some sign we could use when we mean parentheses,—so, for example,” and she described two curves with her hand. “It is you I am glad to see, soap or no soap.”

“That’s gross flattery,” responded Mrs. Holmes. And Persis answered the charge with a frantic kiss.