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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. DUD'S SISTER
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group
+he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who
+had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly
+surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always
+had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant.
+
+“Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'” he had protested. “You don't mean
+to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?”
+
+Varian had despaired of giving him any idea.
+
+“Come over and see Mrs. Dud,” he had urged, “and do her portrait. We've
+moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is.
+When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store
+Saturday afternoons--”
+
+“And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,” assented Hunter,
+anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation.
+
+Varian had roared helplessly. “Cap? Cap!” he had moaned finally. “Oh, my
+sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be
+like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert'
+and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like
+awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap.”
+
+Hunter had looked puzzled.
+
+“But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,” he had
+murmured defensively. “I don't wish to be invidious, but surely
+Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between
+forty-five and fifty now.”
+
+Varian had waved his hand dramatically. “Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and
+time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on
+a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my
+rheumatism!”
+
+But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second
+seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed
+in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the
+house-party.
+
+On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring
+young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp
+in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy
+Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable
+contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held
+high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller
+than the girlish ones all around her.
+
+Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there
+with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another
+with some particularly desirable sandwich, “rubbing it in,” as he said
+to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly
+uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead
+the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men
+could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted.
+
+What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life!
+Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish
+picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the
+sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with
+the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh
+from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained
+force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different
+point of view.
+
+He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of
+their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never
+approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the
+side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully
+matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out
+of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at
+Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was
+carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by
+intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther
+corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all
+abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the
+hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was
+there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved
+and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A
+second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange
+globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the
+third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a
+woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or
+two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to
+the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid
+dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred
+vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind
+of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton
+stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of
+the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china
+and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some
+farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still.
+
+Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed
+picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother
+and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what
+cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly,
+they had sweetened his boyhood.
+
+What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every
+passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow
+and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His
+little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a
+dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway
+pictures that came in “painting-books,” with colored prints on alternate
+pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books
+the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and
+mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints
+of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of
+tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere
+the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the
+likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They
+must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he.
+
+Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted
+into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest
+of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his
+boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books.
+
+Suddenly a door opened into the green.
+
+A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray
+covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a
+great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.
+
+“They're just out o' the oven,” she began, but Varian could contain
+himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those
+cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three
+long steps, and faced the astonished maid.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he said firmly, “but it is very necessary that I
+should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?”
+
+She giggled convulsively.
+
+“I--I guess you can, sir,” she murmured, laying down the tray and
+retreating toward the house door.
+
+Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively
+bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as
+she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead,
+and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected
+irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life.
+
+“You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,” she said graciously.
+“I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for
+me--I taught her the rule. I always call them”--she laughed nervously,
+and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and “talking against
+time,” as they said--“I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--”
+
+“Aunt Delia's cookies!” he interrupted. “What Aunt Delia?”
+
+“Aunt Delia Parmentre,” she returned, a little surprised, evidently,
+at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm
+molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. “She wasn't
+really my aunt, of course--”
+
+“But she was mine!” he burst out, “and these are her cookies, and no
+mistake. Who are you?”
+
+Again she flushed, but more lightly.
+
+“I am Miss Redding,” she said with a gentle dignity, “Mrs. Wilton's
+sister.”
+
+He stared at her vaguely.
+
+“Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--” He stopped
+abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
+
+“You didn't know she had one?” she asked, almost mischievously.
+
+“I didn't know you were here,” he recovered himself. “You've never been
+with Mrs. Dud before, have you?”
+
+“No, not here when there was company,” she said.
+
+He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories.
+
+“Her sister--her sister,” he muttered. “Why, then,” with an illuminating
+smile, “I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!”
+
+She smiled and held out her hand.
+
+“I'm very glad to see you,” she said cordially. “Won't you--” She looked
+about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
+
+“You've changed since we met last,” he remarked, biting into his cooky.
+She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
+thoughtfully.
+
+“I was six years old then,” she said; “and you were one of the 'big
+boys'--you were fourteen.”
+
+“That's a long while,” he suggested laughingly.
+
+“It is thirty-six years,” she replied simply.
+
+He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
+accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
+charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
+
+“You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,” he said.
+
+She nodded. “Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,” she said
+seriously. “I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of
+it. You drank a great deal.”
+
+He chuckled. “I was born thirsty,” he acknowledged. “By George, how
+it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red
+thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk,
+and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit
+on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And
+carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told,
+that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.”
+
+“One of the big girls fainted away,” she added, “and they laid her on
+the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
+spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
+very timid.”
+
+He began on another cooky.
+
+“Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?” he inquired, his
+eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
+
+She nodded softly.
+
+“And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--”
+
+“It was houses,” she reminded him. “We little girls used to make little
+houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you
+boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on.”
+
+“Ah, yes!” It all came back to him. “And then you'd race off to get
+flag-root or something, and--”
+
+“And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,” she added.
+
+“But what a mite you were, to be in school!” he said wonderingly. “What
+under heaven did you study?”
+
+“I don't remember at all,” she confessed. “But I suppose I spelled. Do
+you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave
+off head'?”
+
+He chuckled. “I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would
+'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!”
+
+He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of
+interrupting.
+
+“In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively
+swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now!
+How did you get there?”
+
+“I only went in the summer,” she said; “and I used to come in all
+stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful”--she
+grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and
+pigtails--“the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the
+way to school!”
+
+She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her
+big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested.
+
+“No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for
+years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!”
+
+“The mess”--she bent her brows reprovingly--“it's mayonnaise sauce. But
+I don't think--”
+
+He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee
+wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward
+her.
+
+“You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!” she
+cried reproachfully. “I thought at first it was the craziest thing to
+do, but I didn't dare say so.”
+
+He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession.
+
+“And now you're not afraid?”
+
+She blushed again. It was very becoming.
+
+“It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been
+so long--we remember so well--” She sighed a little. He studied her
+face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes,
+but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a
+more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark
+shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of
+tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous
+regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly.
+
+Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could
+prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house.
+
+“At our age there's no use in running risks,” she said simply, “you
+ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.”
+
+Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair.
+
+“Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!” he said lightly.
+
+She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the
+yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally
+silly.
+
+“Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?” he
+inquired lazily.
+
+She nodded. “Or it curdles,” she explained. “The cook sprained his wrist
+yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't
+trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as
+his. Did you ever see him?”
+
+“Well, no,” Varian returned. “But he doesn't need to be seen to be
+appreciated.”
+
+A strange suspicion crept over him.
+
+“Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--” He could not say it
+properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her!
+
+She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their
+uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling.
+
+“Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,” she said quietly. “She
+wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much
+society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I
+used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but
+I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on
+all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you
+find it so?”
+
+He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all
+the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the
+afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the
+dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the
+actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly.
+
+“It is not always restful,” he admitted.
+
+“It makes my head ache,” she remarked placidly. “I like to see the girls
+enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie
+are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm
+very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't
+shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's
+gentle--and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The doctor
+that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they
+couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some
+medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I
+wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a
+very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after
+that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They
+seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's
+staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked
+her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing”--her
+eyes met his wonderingly--“how much trouble you can have, with all the
+money you want! I--I was sorry for her,” she added, half to herself.
+
+Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver
+tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would
+admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room.
+
+“How sweet and good you are!” he said warmly; and then, to cover her
+deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly,
+“Are you very busy in the morning, always?”
+
+“There are different things,” she murmured, still looking at her spoon.
+“I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in
+Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years,
+till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One
+died; I can't seem to get over it--” Her eyes filled, and she made no
+effort to cover two tears that slipped over.
+
+Varian took her hand again. “I know about that--I know!” he said softly.
+
+“Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses
+here,” she went on more cheerfully. “The gardeners are very kind to
+me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good
+many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal,
+and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here.
+They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or
+pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to
+do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They
+talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell
+Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when
+she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my
+sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I
+always do. She never makes a mistake.”
+
+“Oh, she's wonderful,” Varian agreed easily. “There's nobody like Mrs.
+Dud, of course.”
+
+She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him.
+
+“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “You all say it--in just that
+way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful?
+Because she looks so young?”
+
+“That, in the first place,” Varian returned, with a smile, “but not only
+that.”
+
+“Of course that is very strange,” she mused. “Now Lizzie is three years
+older than I. You would never think it, would you?”
+
+“No,” he agreed, still smiling; “but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than
+everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,” he continued,
+“is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and
+so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your
+sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the
+very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various
+affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves
+a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so
+admirably--” He paused.
+
+She shook her head thoughtfully.
+
+“But everything is done for her!” she protested. “Why, I have never
+yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a
+housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all.
+And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time,
+you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home
+in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks
+after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?”
+
+He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially:
+
+“Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of
+a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She
+lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought,
+though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't
+you?”
+
+A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet
+she was!
+
+“If she made that dress, I certainly should!” he declared.
+
+She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly.
+
+“Oh, this is only a cotton dress,” she said. “But she made my gray silk,
+too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.”
+
+She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty.
+
+“Now my mother,” she began, “_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you
+know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like
+yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the
+cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took
+care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the
+carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves
+and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I
+have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like
+them.”
+
+“It was tremendous,” he said. “My Aunt Delia did that, too.”
+
+“We were old-fashioned, even for then,” she said. “Everybody didn't do
+so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of
+the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back
+to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all
+changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother
+went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the
+other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!”
+
+He laughed. “That _is_ delicious!” he said.
+
+“See what I found to-day!” she added, drawing a small object from
+her pocket. “I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so
+interested when I told her about it.”
+
+She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
+mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
+English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_
+
+“That was mother's,” she said, “the girls wore them then. She was quite
+a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I
+say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and
+old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little
+Dudley, and it was so long before he came.”
+
+They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
+burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong.
+The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face,
+with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and
+cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.
+
+A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took
+out his watch.
+
+“Just time to dress,” he sighed. “Will you be here again? We must talk
+old times once more.”
+
+She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was
+still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice
+him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture
+unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
+
+He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
+ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at
+the scene before him.
+
+Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
+that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
+
+“Puss! puss! Here, puss!” a high voice called, and a tall slender girl
+in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the
+square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left,
+but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail
+of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her
+partner's tree.
+
+“One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
+more before we go in!” called the pink girl.
+
+“Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!” added
+Mrs. Dud.
+
+“Here, puss! here, puss!” With excited little shrieks and laughs they
+dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
+Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
+
+“Too late, too late!” he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
+purple colonel, he bore him off.
+
+“Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,”
+ complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the
+shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned
+toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed
+contentedly.
+
+“When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh,
+Varian?” he said, half serious. “It's a poor job, getting old alone.
+Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to
+get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other
+fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?”
+
+Varian nodded. “Right enough,” he said.
+
+“Different ending to their route!” suggested the colonel, jerking his
+elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
+
+“That's it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
+his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
+
+He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind
+the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than
+once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy
+for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
+deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
+was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner
+he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the
+gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet,
+of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned
+snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never
+succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest
+gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided.
+
+He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance
+that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double
+existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of
+course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a
+pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating
+charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly
+dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
+
+“I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,” he said, a little awkwardly.
+“I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks
+at it?”
+
+“Mary?” said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. “Yes, I suppose so. Why?”
+
+The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
+that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
+
+“Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am
+glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
+so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?”
+
+“What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed
+stupefaction.
+
+“I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply.
+“Is there--was there ever anybody else?”
+
+For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
+than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
+the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
+gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
+
+“I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,” she answered
+him, clear-eyed; “and there was never,” her tone was too sweet, he
+thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, “there was never
+anybody else!”
+
+Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall
+of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was
+ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble
+of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her
+among her flowers.
+
+“I'm getting old--old!” he said to himself, but he said it with a smile.
+
+For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
+ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced
+her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in
+her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet
+placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he
+had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked
+beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light
+question he turned and faced her.
+
+“You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
+flowers,” he said pleadingly.
+
+“Flowers? Where?” she asked.
+
+“Wherever we lived,” he answered. “And oh, Mary, I think we could be
+happy together! Don't say no!” as she shrank a little. “Don't, Mary, for
+heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to
+care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I
+can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so,
+and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--”
+
+He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
+
+“We can plan it out together,” she said.
+
+He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her
+clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but
+he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. DUD'S SISTER
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group
+he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who
+had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly
+surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always
+had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant.
+
+"Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'" he had protested. "You don't mean
+to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?"
+
+Varian had despaired of giving him any idea.
+
+"Come over and see Mrs. Dud," he had urged, "and do her portrait. We've
+moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is.
+When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store
+Saturday afternoons--"
+
+"And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap," assented Hunter,
+anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation.
+
+Varian had roared helplessly. "Cap? Cap!" he had moaned finally. "Oh, my
+sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be
+like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert'
+and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like
+awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap."
+
+Hunter had looked puzzled.
+
+"But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think," he had
+murmured defensively. "I don't wish to be invidious, but surely
+Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between
+forty-five and fifty now."
+
+Varian had waved his hand dramatically. "Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and
+time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on
+a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my
+rheumatism!"
+
+But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second
+seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed
+in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the
+house-party.
+
+On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring
+young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp
+in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy
+Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable
+contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held
+high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller
+than the girlish ones all around her.
+
+Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there
+with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another
+with some particularly desirable sandwich, "rubbing it in," as he said
+to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly
+uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead
+the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men
+could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted.
+
+What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life!
+Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish
+picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the
+sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with
+the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh
+from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained
+force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different
+point of view.
+
+He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of
+their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never
+approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the
+side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully
+matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out
+of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at
+Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was
+carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by
+intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther
+corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all
+abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the
+hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was
+there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved
+and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A
+second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange
+globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the
+third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a
+woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or
+two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to
+the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid
+dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred
+vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind
+of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton
+stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of
+the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china
+and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some
+farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still.
+
+Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed
+picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother
+and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what
+cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly,
+they had sweetened his boyhood.
+
+What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every
+passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow
+and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His
+little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a
+dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway
+pictures that came in "painting-books," with colored prints on alternate
+pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books
+the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and
+mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints
+of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of
+tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere
+the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the
+likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They
+must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he.
+
+Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted
+into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest
+of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his
+boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books.
+
+Suddenly a door opened into the green.
+
+A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray
+covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a
+great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.
+
+"They're just out o' the oven," she began, but Varian could contain
+himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those
+cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three
+long steps, and faced the astonished maid.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said firmly, "but it is very necessary that I
+should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?"
+
+She giggled convulsively.
+
+"I--I guess you can, sir," she murmured, laying down the tray and
+retreating toward the house door.
+
+Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively
+bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as
+she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead,
+and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected
+irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life.
+
+"You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure," she said graciously.
+"I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for
+me--I taught her the rule. I always call them"--she laughed nervously,
+and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and "talking against
+time," as they said--"I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--"
+
+"Aunt Delia's cookies!" he interrupted. "What Aunt Delia?"
+
+"Aunt Delia Parmentre," she returned, a little surprised, evidently,
+at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm
+molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. "She wasn't
+really my aunt, of course--"
+
+"But she was mine!" he burst out, "and these are her cookies, and no
+mistake. Who are you?"
+
+Again she flushed, but more lightly.
+
+"I am Miss Redding," she said with a gentle dignity, "Mrs. Wilton's
+sister."
+
+He stared at her vaguely.
+
+"Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--" He stopped
+abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
+
+"You didn't know she had one?" she asked, almost mischievously.
+
+"I didn't know you were here," he recovered himself. "You've never been
+with Mrs. Dud before, have you?"
+
+"No, not here when there was company," she said.
+
+He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories.
+
+"Her sister--her sister," he muttered. "Why, then," with an illuminating
+smile, "I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!"
+
+She smiled and held out her hand.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," she said cordially. "Won't you--" She looked
+about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
+
+"You've changed since we met last," he remarked, biting into his cooky.
+She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I was six years old then," she said; "and you were one of the 'big
+boys'--you were fourteen."
+
+"That's a long while," he suggested laughingly.
+
+"It is thirty-six years," she replied simply.
+
+He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
+accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
+charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
+
+"You used to hand me water in a tin dipper," he said.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good," she said
+seriously. "I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of
+it. You drank a great deal."
+
+He chuckled. "I was born thirsty," he acknowledged. "By George, how
+it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red
+thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk,
+and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit
+on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And
+carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told,
+that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day."
+
+"One of the big girls fainted away," she added, "and they laid her on
+the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
+spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
+very timid."
+
+He began on another cooky.
+
+"Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?" he inquired, his
+eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
+
+She nodded softly.
+
+"And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--"
+
+"It was houses," she reminded him. "We little girls used to make little
+houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you
+boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on."
+
+"Ah, yes!" It all came back to him. "And then you'd race off to get
+flag-root or something, and--"
+
+"And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same," she added.
+
+"But what a mite you were, to be in school!" he said wonderingly. "What
+under heaven did you study?"
+
+"I don't remember at all," she confessed. "But I suppose I spelled. Do
+you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave
+off head'?"
+
+He chuckled. "I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would
+'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!"
+
+He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of
+interrupting.
+
+"In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively
+swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now!
+How did you get there?"
+
+"I only went in the summer," she said; "and I used to come in all
+stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful"--she
+grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and
+pigtails--"the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the
+way to school!"
+
+She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her
+big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested.
+
+"No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for
+years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!"
+
+"The mess"--she bent her brows reprovingly--"it's mayonnaise sauce. But
+I don't think--"
+
+He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee
+wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward
+her.
+
+"You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!" she
+cried reproachfully. "I thought at first it was the craziest thing to
+do, but I didn't dare say so."
+
+He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession.
+
+"And now you're not afraid?"
+
+She blushed again. It was very becoming.
+
+"It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been
+so long--we remember so well--" She sighed a little. He studied her
+face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes,
+but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a
+more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark
+shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of
+tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous
+regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly.
+
+Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could
+prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house.
+
+"At our age there's no use in running risks," she said simply, "you
+ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks."
+
+Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair.
+
+"Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!" he said lightly.
+
+She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the
+yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally
+silly.
+
+"Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?" he
+inquired lazily.
+
+She nodded. "Or it curdles," she explained. "The cook sprained his wrist
+yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't
+trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as
+his. Did you ever see him?"
+
+"Well, no," Varian returned. "But he doesn't need to be seen to be
+appreciated."
+
+A strange suspicion crept over him.
+
+"Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--" He could not say it
+properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her!
+
+She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their
+uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling.
+
+"Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything," she said quietly. "She
+wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much
+society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I
+used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but
+I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on
+all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you
+find it so?"
+
+He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all
+the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the
+afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the
+dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the
+actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly.
+
+"It is not always restful," he admitted.
+
+"It makes my head ache," she remarked placidly. "I like to see the girls
+enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie
+are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm
+very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't
+shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's
+gentle--and I drive about in the pha�ton a great deal. The doctor
+that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they
+couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some
+medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I
+wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a
+very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after
+that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They
+seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's
+staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked
+her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing"--her
+eyes met his wonderingly--"how much trouble you can have, with all the
+money you want! I--I was sorry for her," she added, half to herself.
+
+Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver
+tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would
+admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room.
+
+"How sweet and good you are!" he said warmly; and then, to cover her
+deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly,
+"Are you very busy in the morning, always?"
+
+"There are different things," she murmured, still looking at her spoon.
+"I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in
+Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years,
+till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One
+died; I can't seem to get over it--" Her eyes filled, and she made no
+effort to cover two tears that slipped over.
+
+Varian took her hand again. "I know about that--I know!" he said softly.
+
+"Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses
+here," she went on more cheerfully. "The gardeners are very kind to
+me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good
+many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal,
+and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here.
+They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or
+pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to
+do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They
+talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell
+Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when
+she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my
+sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I
+always do. She never makes a mistake."
+
+"Oh, she's wonderful," Varian agreed easily. "There's nobody like Mrs.
+Dud, of course."
+
+She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "You all say it--in just that
+way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful?
+Because she looks so young?"
+
+"That, in the first place," Varian returned, with a smile, "but not only
+that."
+
+"Of course that is very strange," she mused. "Now Lizzie is three years
+older than I. You would never think it, would you?"
+
+"No," he agreed, still smiling; "but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than
+everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean," he continued,
+"is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and
+so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your
+sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the
+very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various
+affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves
+a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so
+admirably--" He paused.
+
+She shook her head thoughtfully.
+
+"But everything is done for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never
+yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a
+housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all.
+And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time,
+you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home
+in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks
+after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?"
+
+He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially:
+
+"Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of
+a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She
+lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought,
+though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't
+you?"
+
+A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet
+she was!
+
+"If she made that dress, I certainly should!" he declared.
+
+She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly.
+
+"Oh, this is only a cotton dress," she said. "But she made my gray silk,
+too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully."
+
+She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty.
+
+"Now my mother," she began, "_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you
+know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like
+yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the
+cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took
+care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the
+carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves
+and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I
+have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like
+them."
+
+"It was tremendous," he said. "My Aunt Delia did that, too."
+
+"We were old-fashioned, even for then," she said. "Everybody didn't do
+so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of
+the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back
+to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all
+changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother
+went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the
+other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!"
+
+He laughed. "That _is_ delicious!" he said.
+
+"See what I found to-day!" she added, drawing a small object from
+her pocket. "I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so
+interested when I told her about it."
+
+She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
+mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
+English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_
+
+"That was mother's," she said, "the girls wore them then. She was quite
+a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I
+say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and
+old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little
+Dudley, and it was so long before he came."
+
+They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
+burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong.
+The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face,
+with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and
+cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.
+
+A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took
+out his watch.
+
+"Just time to dress," he sighed. "Will you be here again? We must talk
+old times once more."
+
+She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was
+still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice
+him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture
+unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
+
+He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
+ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at
+the scene before him.
+
+Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
+that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
+
+"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl
+in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the
+square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left,
+but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail
+of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her
+partner's tree.
+
+"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
+more before we go in!" called the pink girl.
+
+"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added
+Mrs. Dud.
+
+"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they
+dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
+Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
+
+"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
+purple colonel, he bore him off.
+
+"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,"
+complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the
+shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned
+toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed
+contentedly.
+
+"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh,
+Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone.
+Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to
+get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other
+fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?"
+
+Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said.
+
+"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his
+elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
+
+"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
+his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
+
+He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind
+the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than
+once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy
+for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
+deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
+was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner
+he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the
+gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet,
+of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned
+snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never
+succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest
+gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided.
+
+He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance
+that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double
+existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of
+course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a
+pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating
+charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly
+dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly.
+"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks
+at it?"
+
+"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?"
+
+The na�ve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
+that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
+
+"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am
+glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
+so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed
+stupefaction.
+
+"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out plumply.
+"Is there--was there ever anybody else?"
+
+For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
+than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
+the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
+gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
+
+"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she answered
+him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too sweet, he
+thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there was never
+anybody else!"
+
+Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall
+of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was
+ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble
+of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her
+among her flowers.
+
+"I'm getting old--old!" he said to himself, but he said it with a smile.
+
+For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
+ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced
+her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in
+her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet
+placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he
+had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked
+beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light
+question he turned and faced her.
+
+"You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
+flowers," he said pleadingly.
+
+"Flowers? Where?" she asked.
+
+"Wherever we lived," he answered. "And oh, Mary, I think we could be
+happy together! Don't say no!" as she shrank a little. "Don't, Mary, for
+heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to
+care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I
+can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so,
+and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--"
+
+He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
+
+"We can plan it out together," she said.
+
+He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her
+clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but
+he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MRS. DUD'S SISTER
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's
+      Sons
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group he
+      wished that Hunter could see the picture they made&mdash;Hunter, who had
+      not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly
+      surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids&mdash;she
+      always had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'&rdquo; he had protested. &ldquo;You don't mean to
+      say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had despaired of giving him any idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come over and see Mrs. Dud,&rdquo; he had urged, &ldquo;and do her portrait. We've
+      moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder&mdash;she really is.
+      When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store
+      Saturday afternoons&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,&rdquo; assented Hunter,
+      anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had roared helplessly. &ldquo;Cap? Cap!&rdquo; he had moaned finally. &ldquo;Oh, my
+      sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be
+      like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' and
+      'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like awfully to
+      see Mrs. Dud in a cap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hunter had looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,&rdquo; he had
+      murmured defensively. &ldquo;I don't wish to be invidious, but surely Lizzie
+      must be&mdash;let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety&mdash;why, she must be between
+      forty-five and fifty now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had waved his hand dramatically. &ldquo;Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and
+      time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on a
+      horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my rheumatism!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second
+      seasickness&mdash;it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew&mdash;had
+      stayed in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the
+      house-party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring
+      young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp in
+      stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy Parisian parasol,
+      she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable contemporaries; her
+      delicately squared chin, for the most part held high, showed a straight
+      white collar under a throat only a little fuller than the girlish ones all
+      around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there with
+      some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another with
+      some particularly desirable sandwich, &ldquo;rubbing it in,&rdquo; as he said to the
+      men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly
+      uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead the
+      cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men could
+      take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! Varian
+      walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish picture
+      they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the sweet faint
+      odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with the quiet,
+      sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh from Hunter's
+      quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained force from his
+      separateness; he walked farther away to get a different point of view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of their
+      voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never approached
+      before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the side and back of
+      the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully matched to its green,
+      left open by accident, showed a picture so out of line with the succession
+      of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at Wilton Bluffs that he stopped
+      involuntarily. The rectangle was carpeted with the characteristic emerald
+      turf of the place, divided by intersecting red brick paths into four
+      regular squares. In the farther corner of each of these a trim green
+      clothes-tree was planted, all abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone
+      dazzling white against the hedge. One of the squares was a neat little
+      kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar
+      green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought
+      mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered
+      with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens
+      ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small
+      wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table
+      were one or two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand,
+      raised to the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber
+      fluid dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm
+      stirred vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair&mdash;a
+      kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped
+      cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding
+      of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china
+      and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some
+      farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed
+      picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother
+      and his Aunt Delia&mdash;he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what
+      cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly,
+      they had sweetened his boyhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every
+      passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow
+      and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His
+      little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a dearly
+      loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway pictures
+      that came in &ldquo;painting-books,&rdquo; with colored prints on alternate pages and
+      corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books the boy had
+      cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and mussy,
+      quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints of the
+      hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of tiny globes,
+      the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere the prim
+      rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the likeness,
+      almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They must have
+      colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted
+      into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest
+      of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his
+      boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a door opened into the green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray
+      covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a
+      great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're just out o' the oven,&rdquo; she began, but Varian could contain
+      himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those
+      cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three long
+      steps, and faced the astonished maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said firmly, &ldquo;but it is very necessary that I
+      should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She giggled convulsively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I guess you can, sir,&rdquo; she murmured, laying down the tray and
+      retreating toward the house door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively
+      bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper&mdash;he was sure of that. Even
+      as she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead,
+      and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected irrelevantly
+      that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,&rdquo; she said graciously. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for me&mdash;I
+      taught her the rule. I always call them&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed nervously, and
+      it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and &ldquo;talking against
+      time,&rdquo; as they said&mdash;&ldquo;I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Delia's cookies!&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;What Aunt Delia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Delia Parmentre,&rdquo; she returned, a little surprised, evidently, at
+      this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm
+      molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. &ldquo;She wasn't really
+      my aunt, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she was mine!&rdquo; he burst out, &ldquo;and these are her cookies, and no
+      mistake. Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she flushed, but more lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Miss Redding,&rdquo; she said with a gentle dignity, &ldquo;Mrs. Wilton's
+      sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Wilton&mdash;oh! you're her sister? I didn't know&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped
+      abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't know she had one?&rdquo; she asked, almost mischievously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you were here,&rdquo; he recovered himself. &ldquo;You've never been
+      with Mrs. Dud before, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not here when there was company,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her sister&mdash;her sister,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; with an
+      illuminating smile, &ldquo;I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled and held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very glad to see you,&rdquo; she said cordially. &ldquo;Won't you&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      looked about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've changed since we met last,&rdquo; he remarked, biting into his cooky.
+      She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
+      thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was six years old then,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and you were one of the 'big boys'&mdash;you
+      were fourteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a long while,&rdquo; he suggested laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is thirty-six years,&rdquo; she replied simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
+      accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
+      charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,&rdquo; she said
+      seriously. &ldquo;I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of
+      it. You drank a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;I was born thirsty,&rdquo; he acknowledged. &ldquo;By George, how it
+      comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red thing&mdash;remember
+      how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, and another under
+      that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit on, and we just
+      whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And carved&mdash;Lord! I
+      don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, that was clear! I
+      nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the big girls fainted away,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;and they laid her on the
+      floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
+      spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
+      very timid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began on another cooky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?&rdquo; he inquired, his eyes
+      fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And played some game with stones? I can't just remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was houses,&rdquo; she reminded him. &ldquo;We little girls used to make little
+      houses&mdash;just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if
+      you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner
+      on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; It all came back to him. &ldquo;And then you'd race off to get
+      flag-root or something, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what a mite you were, to be in school!&rdquo; he said wonderingly. &ldquo;What
+      under heaven did you study?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't remember at all,&rdquo; she confessed. &ldquo;But I suppose I spelled. Do you
+      remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave off
+      head'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would
+      'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of interrupting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the winter, though&mdash;George! but it was cold! We used to
+      positively swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such
+      snows now! How did you get there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only went in the summer,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and I used to come in all stained
+      with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful&rdquo;&mdash;she grew
+      stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and pigtails&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the way to school!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her big
+      apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman&mdash;a lady&mdash;in an apron
+      for years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the&mdash;the mess in the
+      dish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mess&rdquo;&mdash;she bent her brows reprovingly&mdash;&ldquo;it's mayonnaise
+      sauce. But I don't think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee wrung
+      an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!&rdquo; she
+      cried reproachfully. &ldquo;I thought at first it was the craziest thing to do,
+      but I didn't dare say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now you're not afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed again. It was very becoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems&mdash;it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been so
+      long&mdash;we remember so well&mdash;&rdquo; She sighed a little. He studied her
+      face&mdash;so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray
+      eyes, but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes,
+      a more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark
+      shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of tiny
+      wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous regard that
+      her sister's literal directness missed utterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could prevent
+      her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At our age there's no use in running risks,&rdquo; she said simply, &ldquo;you ought
+      not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!&rdquo; he said lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the
+      yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally
+      silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it have to go in slowly like that&mdash;the whole bottleful?&rdquo; he
+      inquired lazily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;Or it curdles,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;The cook sprained his wrist
+      yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise&mdash;he can't
+      trust them&mdash;and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good
+      as his. Did you ever see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, no,&rdquo; Varian returned. &ldquo;But he doesn't need to be seen to be
+      appreciated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange suspicion crept over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you often&mdash;Do you do much&mdash;How is it that you&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      could not say it properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud&mdash;&mdash; It
+      was unworthy of her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their
+      uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;She wanted me
+      to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much society, and
+      I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I used to be. I'd
+      have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but I guess it tires
+      me a little now. There seems to be so much going on all the time. Lizzie
+      says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you find it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all the
+      morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the afternoon&mdash;she
+      preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the dramatics rehearsal,
+      with a poor light, all the evening, while the actors gossiped and
+      squabbled and flirted contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not always restful,&rdquo; he admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes my head ache,&rdquo; she remarked placidly. &ldquo;I like to see the girls
+      enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy&mdash;some of those visiting
+      Lizzie are so pretty!&mdash;but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so
+      much. I'm very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that
+      won't shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me&mdash;a white one
+      that's gentle&mdash;and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The
+      doctor that came that night&mdash;were you here?&mdash;when Mrs. Page
+      fainted and they couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of
+      taking some medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked
+      me if I wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called
+      for a very nice lady&mdash;a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?&mdash;and
+      after that a young girl with spinal trouble, and&mdash;and several others.
+      They seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl
+      that's staying here&mdash;she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl,
+      and I liked her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's
+      astonishing&rdquo;&mdash;her eyes met his wonderingly&mdash;&ldquo;how much trouble
+      you can have, with all the money you want! I&mdash;I was sorry for her,&rdquo;
+       she added, half to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver
+      tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would admire
+      some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How sweet and good you are!&rdquo; he said warmly; and then, to cover her deep
+      embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, &ldquo;Are you
+      very busy in the morning, always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are different things,&rdquo; she murmured, still looking at her spoon. &ldquo;I
+      have letters to write&mdash;I keep up with a good many old friends in
+      Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years,
+      till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One
+      died; I can't seem to get over it&mdash;&rdquo; Her eyes filled, and she made no
+      effort to cover two tears that slipped over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian took her hand again. &ldquo;I know about that&mdash;I know!&rdquo; he said
+      softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses
+      here,&rdquo; she went on more cheerfully. &ldquo;The gardeners are very kind to me&mdash;I
+      think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good many
+      slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, and
+      there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. They&mdash;the
+      ones I know&mdash;come in for a moment while I mend something, or pin
+      their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to do!
+      They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They talk
+      to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell Lizzie
+      I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when she drops
+      in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my sitting-room
+      every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting&mdash;and I always do.
+      She never makes a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she's wonderful,&rdquo; Varian agreed easily. &ldquo;There's nobody like Mrs.
+      Dud, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;You all say it&mdash;in just that
+      way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful?
+      Because she looks so young?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, in the first place,&rdquo; Varian returned, with a smile, &ldquo;but not only
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course that is very strange,&rdquo; she mused. &ldquo;Now Lizzie is three years
+      older than I. You would never think it, would you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he agreed, still smiling; &ldquo;but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than
+      everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;is
+      her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and so much
+      better than other people. We try to keep up with things&mdash;your sister
+      is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the very latest
+      thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various affairs&mdash;it
+      makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves a tremendous field to
+      cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so admirably&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But everything is done for her!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;Why, I have never yet
+      seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper?
+      Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never
+      sews a stitch&mdash;there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and
+      that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And
+      little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his
+      clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of a
+      man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She
+      lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought,
+      though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet
+      she was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she made that dress, I certainly should!&rdquo; he declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this is only a cotton dress,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But she made my gray silk,
+      too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now my mother,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;<i>she</i> was wonderful, if you like. Do you
+      know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like
+      yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the cooking&mdash;for
+      all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took care of the hens;
+      she made the candles and the soap; she made the carpets and all our
+      clothes&mdash;my brothers', too; and she put up preserves and jellies and
+      cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I have some of mother's
+      embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was tremendous,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My Aunt Delia did that, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were old-fashioned, even for then,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everybody didn't do so
+      much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of the
+      new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back to it
+      for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all changed.
+      We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother went to
+      singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the other day,
+      to see what they did&mdash;she wanted it for a party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;That <i>is</i> delicious!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See what I found to-day!&rdquo; she added, drawing a small object from her
+      pocket. &ldquo;I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so interested
+      when I told her about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
+      mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
+      English script. He puzzled it out: <i>A Whig or no Husband!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was mother's,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the girls wore them then. She was quite a
+      belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I say
+      that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and old. She
+      had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little Dudley, and
+      it was so long before he came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
+      burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. The
+      sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, with its
+      delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and cheek. He
+      had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took
+      out his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just time to dress,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;Will you be here again? We must talk old
+      times once more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was
+      still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice him,
+      and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture unbroken;
+      again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
+      ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at the
+      scene before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
+      that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puss! puss! Here, puss!&rdquo; a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in
+      a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A
+      portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a
+      romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her
+      gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her partner's
+      tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
+      more before we go in!&rdquo; called the pink girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out&mdash;the colonel's beaten!&rdquo;
+       added Mrs. Dud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, puss! here, puss!&rdquo; With excited little shrieks and laughs they
+      dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
+      Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late, too late!&rdquo; he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
+      purple colonel, he bore him off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,&rdquo;
+       complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the shrubbery.
+      In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned toward each other
+      an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake&mdash;eh,
+      Varian?&rdquo; he said, half serious. &ldquo;It's a poor job, getting old alone. Live
+      at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked
+      again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other fellow's game&mdash;little
+      monotonous after a while, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian nodded. &ldquo;Right enough,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different ending to their route!&rdquo; suggested the colonel, jerking his
+      elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it!&rdquo; The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
+      his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the
+      hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once
+      he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for
+      gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
+      deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
+      was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner he
+      secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the gleaming
+      silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, of the woman
+      opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a
+      great vogue among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely
+      too effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he
+      decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that
+      charmed him particularly&mdash;the feeling of an almost double existence;
+      but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient,
+      restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for
+      his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she
+      realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook
+      himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,&rdquo; he said, a little awkwardly.
+      &ldquo;I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think&mdash;is that the way <i>she</i>
+      looks at it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary?&rdquo; said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. &ldquo;Yes, I suppose so. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
+      that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am
+      glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
+      so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth do you mean?&rdquo; asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, do you think she would marry me?&rdquo; Varian brought out plumply. &ldquo;Is
+      there&mdash;was there ever anybody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
+      than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
+      the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
+      gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,&rdquo; she answered
+      him, clear-eyed; &ldquo;and there was never,&rdquo; her tone was too sweet, he
+      thought, to carry but one meaning&mdash;pleasure for him, &ldquo;there was never
+      anybody else!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of
+      nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was ready
+      to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of pretty
+      girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among her
+      flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm getting old&mdash;old!&rdquo; he said to himself, but he said it with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
+      ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced her
+      a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her sunny,
+      busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity. With
+      an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more the
+      blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her, outwardly
+      content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he turned and
+      faced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
+      flowers,&rdquo; he said pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Flowers? Where?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever we lived,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;And oh, Mary, I think we could be happy
+      together! Don't say no!&rdquo; as she shrank a little. &ldquo;Don't, Mary, for
+      heaven's sake! I care too much&mdash;I care terribly. I am too old a man
+      to care so much and&mdash;lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind.
+      I can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so,
+      and&mdash;But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can plan it out together,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her
+      clear gray eyes would meet his&mdash;her sky-ness was never hesitation&mdash;but
+      he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. DUD'S SISTER
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group
+he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who
+had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly
+surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always
+had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant.
+
+"Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'" he had protested. "You don't mean
+to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?"
+
+Varian had despaired of giving him any idea.
+
+"Come over and see Mrs. Dud," he had urged, "and do her portrait. We've
+moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is.
+When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store
+Saturday afternoons--"
+
+"And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap," assented Hunter,
+anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation.
+
+Varian had roared helplessly. "Cap? Cap!" he had moaned finally. "Oh, my
+sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be
+like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert'
+and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like
+awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap."
+
+Hunter had looked puzzled.
+
+"But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think," he had
+murmured defensively. "I don't wish to be invidious, but surely
+Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between
+forty-five and fifty now."
+
+Varian had waved his hand dramatically. "Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and
+time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on
+a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my
+rheumatism!"
+
+But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second
+seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed
+in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the
+house-party.
+
+On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring
+young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp
+in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy
+Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable
+contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held
+high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller
+than the girlish ones all around her.
+
+Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there
+with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another
+with some particularly desirable sandwich, "rubbing it in," as he said
+to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly
+uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead
+the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men
+could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted.
+
+What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life!
+Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish
+picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the
+sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with
+the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh
+from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained
+force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different
+point of view.
+
+He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of
+their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never
+approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the
+side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully
+matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out
+of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at
+Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was
+carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by
+intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther
+corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all
+abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the
+hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was
+there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved
+and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A
+second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange
+globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the
+third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a
+woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or
+two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to
+the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid
+dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred
+vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind
+of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton
+stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of
+the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china
+and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some
+farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still.
+
+Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed
+picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother
+and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what
+cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly,
+they had sweetened his boyhood.
+
+What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every
+passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow
+and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His
+little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a
+dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway
+pictures that came in "painting-books," with colored prints on alternate
+pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books
+the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and
+mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints
+of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of
+tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere
+the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the
+likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They
+must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he.
+
+Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted
+into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest
+of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his
+boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books.
+
+Suddenly a door opened into the green.
+
+A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray
+covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a
+great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.
+
+"They're just out o' the oven," she began, but Varian could contain
+himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those
+cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three
+long steps, and faced the astonished maid.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said firmly, "but it is very necessary that I
+should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?"
+
+She giggled convulsively.
+
+"I--I guess you can, sir," she murmured, laying down the tray and
+retreating toward the house door.
+
+Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively
+bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as
+she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead,
+and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected
+irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life.
+
+"You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure," she said graciously.
+"I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for
+me--I taught her the rule. I always call them"--she laughed nervously,
+and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and "talking against
+time," as they said--"I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--"
+
+"Aunt Delia's cookies!" he interrupted. "What Aunt Delia?"
+
+"Aunt Delia Parmentre," she returned, a little surprised, evidently,
+at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm
+molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. "She wasn't
+really my aunt, of course--"
+
+"But she was mine!" he burst out, "and these are her cookies, and no
+mistake. Who are you?"
+
+Again she flushed, but more lightly.
+
+"I am Miss Redding," she said with a gentle dignity, "Mrs. Wilton's
+sister."
+
+He stared at her vaguely.
+
+"Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--" He stopped
+abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
+
+"You didn't know she had one?" she asked, almost mischievously.
+
+"I didn't know you were here," he recovered himself. "You've never been
+with Mrs. Dud before, have you?"
+
+"No, not here when there was company," she said.
+
+He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories.
+
+"Her sister--her sister," he muttered. "Why, then," with an illuminating
+smile, "I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!"
+
+She smiled and held out her hand.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you," she said cordially. "Won't you--" She looked
+about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
+
+"You've changed since we met last," he remarked, biting into his cooky.
+She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I was six years old then," she said; "and you were one of the 'big
+boys'--you were fourteen."
+
+"That's a long while," he suggested laughingly.
+
+"It is thirty-six years," she replied simply.
+
+He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
+accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
+charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
+
+"You used to hand me water in a tin dipper," he said.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good," she said
+seriously. "I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of
+it. You drank a great deal."
+
+He chuckled. "I was born thirsty," he acknowledged. "By George, how
+it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red
+thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk,
+and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit
+on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And
+carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told,
+that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day."
+
+"One of the big girls fainted away," she added, "and they laid her on
+the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
+spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
+very timid."
+
+He began on another cooky.
+
+"Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?" he inquired, his
+eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
+
+She nodded softly.
+
+"And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--"
+
+"It was houses," she reminded him. "We little girls used to make little
+houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you
+boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on."
+
+"Ah, yes!" It all came back to him. "And then you'd race off to get
+flag-root or something, and--"
+
+"And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same," she added.
+
+"But what a mite you were, to be in school!" he said wonderingly. "What
+under heaven did you study?"
+
+"I don't remember at all," she confessed. "But I suppose I spelled. Do
+you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave
+off head'?"
+
+He chuckled. "I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would
+'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!"
+
+He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of
+interrupting.
+
+"In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively
+swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now!
+How did you get there?"
+
+"I only went in the summer," she said; "and I used to come in all
+stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful"--she
+grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and
+pigtails--"the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the
+way to school!"
+
+She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her
+big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested.
+
+"No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for
+years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!"
+
+"The mess"--she bent her brows reprovingly--"it's mayonnaise sauce. But
+I don't think--"
+
+He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee
+wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward
+her.
+
+"You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!" she
+cried reproachfully. "I thought at first it was the craziest thing to
+do, but I didn't dare say so."
+
+He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession.
+
+"And now you're not afraid?"
+
+She blushed again. It was very becoming.
+
+"It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been
+so long--we remember so well--" She sighed a little. He studied her
+face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes,
+but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a
+more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark
+shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of
+tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous
+regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly.
+
+Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could
+prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house.
+
+"At our age there's no use in running risks," she said simply, "you
+ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks."
+
+Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair.
+
+"Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!" he said lightly.
+
+She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the
+yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally
+silly.
+
+"Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?" he
+inquired lazily.
+
+She nodded. "Or it curdles," she explained. "The cook sprained his wrist
+yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't
+trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as
+his. Did you ever see him?"
+
+"Well, no," Varian returned. "But he doesn't need to be seen to be
+appreciated."
+
+A strange suspicion crept over him.
+
+"Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--" He could not say it
+properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her!
+
+She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their
+uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling.
+
+"Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything," she said quietly. "She
+wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much
+society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I
+used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but
+I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on
+all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you
+find it so?"
+
+He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all
+the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the
+afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the
+dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the
+actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly.
+
+"It is not always restful," he admitted.
+
+"It makes my head ache," she remarked placidly. "I like to see the girls
+enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie
+are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm
+very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't
+shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's
+gentle--and I drive about in the phaeton a great deal. The doctor
+that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they
+couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some
+medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I
+wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a
+very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after
+that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They
+seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's
+staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked
+her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing"--her
+eyes met his wonderingly--"how much trouble you can have, with all the
+money you want! I--I was sorry for her," she added, half to herself.
+
+Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver
+tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would
+admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room.
+
+"How sweet and good you are!" he said warmly; and then, to cover her
+deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly,
+"Are you very busy in the morning, always?"
+
+"There are different things," she murmured, still looking at her spoon.
+"I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in
+Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years,
+till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One
+died; I can't seem to get over it--" Her eyes filled, and she made no
+effort to cover two tears that slipped over.
+
+Varian took her hand again. "I know about that--I know!" he said softly.
+
+"Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses
+here," she went on more cheerfully. "The gardeners are very kind to
+me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good
+many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal,
+and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here.
+They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or
+pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to
+do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They
+talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell
+Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when
+she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my
+sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I
+always do. She never makes a mistake."
+
+"Oh, she's wonderful," Varian agreed easily. "There's nobody like Mrs.
+Dud, of course."
+
+She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "You all say it--in just that
+way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful?
+Because she looks so young?"
+
+"That, in the first place," Varian returned, with a smile, "but not only
+that."
+
+"Of course that is very strange," she mused. "Now Lizzie is three years
+older than I. You would never think it, would you?"
+
+"No," he agreed, still smiling; "but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than
+everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean," he continued,
+"is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and
+so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your
+sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the
+very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various
+affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves
+a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so
+admirably--" He paused.
+
+She shook her head thoughtfully.
+
+"But everything is done for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never
+yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a
+housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all.
+And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time,
+you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home
+in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks
+after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?"
+
+He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially:
+
+"Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of
+a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She
+lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought,
+though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't
+you?"
+
+A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet
+she was!
+
+"If she made that dress, I certainly should!" he declared.
+
+She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly.
+
+"Oh, this is only a cotton dress," she said. "But she made my gray silk,
+too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully."
+
+She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty.
+
+"Now my mother," she began, "_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you
+know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like
+yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the
+cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took
+care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the
+carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves
+and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I
+have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like
+them."
+
+"It was tremendous," he said. "My Aunt Delia did that, too."
+
+"We were old-fashioned, even for then," she said. "Everybody didn't do
+so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of
+the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back
+to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all
+changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother
+went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the
+other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!"
+
+He laughed. "That _is_ delicious!" he said.
+
+"See what I found to-day!" she added, drawing a small object from
+her pocket. "I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so
+interested when I told her about it."
+
+She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
+mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
+English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_
+
+"That was mother's," she said, "the girls wore them then. She was quite
+a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I
+say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and
+old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little
+Dudley, and it was so long before he came."
+
+They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
+burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong.
+The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face,
+with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and
+cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.
+
+A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took
+out his watch.
+
+"Just time to dress," he sighed. "Will you be here again? We must talk
+old times once more."
+
+She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was
+still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice
+him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture
+unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
+
+He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
+ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at
+the scene before him.
+
+Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
+that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
+
+"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl
+in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the
+square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left,
+but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail
+of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her
+partner's tree.
+
+"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
+more before we go in!" called the pink girl.
+
+"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added
+Mrs. Dud.
+
+"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they
+dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
+Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
+
+"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
+purple colonel, he bore him off.
+
+"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,"
+complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the
+shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned
+toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed
+contentedly.
+
+"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh,
+Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone.
+Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to
+get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other
+fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?"
+
+Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said.
+
+"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his
+elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
+
+"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
+his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
+
+He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind
+the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than
+once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy
+for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
+deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
+was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner
+he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the
+gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet,
+of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned
+snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never
+succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest
+gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided.
+
+He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance
+that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double
+existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of
+course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a
+pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating
+charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly
+dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly.
+"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks
+at it?"
+
+"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?"
+
+The naive egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
+that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
+
+"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am
+glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
+so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?"
+
+"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed
+stupefaction.
+
+"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out plumply.
+"Is there--was there ever anybody else?"
+
+For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
+than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
+the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
+gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
+
+"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she answered
+him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too sweet, he
+thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there was never
+anybody else!"
+
+Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall
+of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was
+ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble
+of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her
+among her flowers.
+
+"I'm getting old--old!" he said to himself, but he said it with a smile.
+
+For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
+ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced
+her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in
+her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet
+placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he
+had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked
+beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light
+question he turned and faced her.
+
+"You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
+flowers," he said pleadingly.
+
+"Flowers? Where?" she asked.
+
+"Wherever we lived," he answered. "And oh, Mary, I think we could be
+happy together! Don't say no!" as she shrank a little. "Don't, Mary, for
+heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to
+care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I
+can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so,
+and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--"
+
+He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
+
+"We can plan it out together," she said.
+
+He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her
+clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but
+he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
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+      Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
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+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      MRS. DUD'S SISTER
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's
+      Sons
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group he
+      wished that Hunter could see the picture they made&mdash;Hunter, who had
+      not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly
+      surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids&mdash;she
+      always had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'&rdquo; he had protested. &ldquo;You don't mean to
+      say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had despaired of giving him any idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come over and see Mrs. Dud,&rdquo; he had urged, &ldquo;and do her portrait. We've
+      moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder&mdash;she really is.
+      When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store
+      Saturday afternoons&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,&rdquo; assented Hunter,
+      anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had roared helplessly. &ldquo;Cap? Cap!&rdquo; he had moaned finally. &ldquo;Oh, my
+      sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be
+      like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' and
+      'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like awfully to
+      see Mrs. Dud in a cap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hunter had looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,&rdquo; he had
+      murmured defensively. &ldquo;I don't wish to be invidious, but surely Lizzie
+      must be&mdash;let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety&mdash;why, she must be between
+      forty-five and fifty now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian had waved his hand dramatically. &ldquo;Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and
+      time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on a
+      horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my rheumatism!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second
+      seasickness&mdash;it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew&mdash;had
+      stayed in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the
+      house-party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring
+      young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp in
+      stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy Parisian parasol,
+      she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable contemporaries; her
+      delicately squared chin, for the most part held high, showed a straight
+      white collar under a throat only a little fuller than the girlish ones all
+      around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there with
+      some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another with
+      some particularly desirable sandwich, &ldquo;rubbing it in,&rdquo; as he said to the
+      men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly
+      uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead the
+      cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men could
+      take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! Varian
+      walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish picture
+      they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the sweet faint
+      odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with the quiet,
+      sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh from Hunter's
+      quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained force from his
+      separateness; he walked farther away to get a different point of view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of their
+      voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never approached
+      before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the side and back of
+      the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully matched to its green,
+      left open by accident, showed a picture so out of line with the succession
+      of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at Wilton Bluffs that he stopped
+      involuntarily. The rectangle was carpeted with the characteristic emerald
+      turf of the place, divided by intersecting red brick paths into four
+      regular squares. In the farther corner of each of these a trim green
+      clothes-tree was planted, all abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone
+      dazzling white against the hedge. One of the squares was a neat little
+      kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar
+      green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought
+      mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered
+      with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens
+      ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small
+      wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table
+      were one or two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand,
+      raised to the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber
+      fluid dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm
+      stirred vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair&mdash;a
+      kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped
+      cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding
+      of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china
+      and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some
+      farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed
+      picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother
+      and his Aunt Delia&mdash;he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what
+      cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly,
+      they had sweetened his boyhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every
+      passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow
+      and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His
+      little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a dearly
+      loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway pictures
+      that came in &ldquo;painting-books,&rdquo; with colored prints on alternate pages and
+      corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books the boy had
+      cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and mussy,
+      quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints of the
+      hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of tiny globes,
+      the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere the prim
+      rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the likeness,
+      almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They must have
+      colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted
+      into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest
+      of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his
+      boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a door opened into the green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray
+      covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a
+      great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're just out o' the oven,&rdquo; she began, but Varian could contain
+      himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those
+      cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three long
+      steps, and faced the astonished maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said firmly, &ldquo;but it is very necessary that I
+      should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She giggled convulsively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I guess you can, sir,&rdquo; she murmured, laying down the tray and
+      retreating toward the house door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively
+      bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper&mdash;he was sure of that. Even
+      as she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead,
+      and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected irrelevantly
+      that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,&rdquo; she said graciously. &ldquo;I&mdash;I
+      didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for me&mdash;I
+      taught her the rule. I always call them&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed nervously, and
+      it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and &ldquo;talking against
+      time,&rdquo; as they said&mdash;&ldquo;I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Delia's cookies!&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;What Aunt Delia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aunt Delia Parmentre,&rdquo; she returned, a little surprised, evidently, at
+      this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm
+      molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. &ldquo;She wasn't really
+      my aunt, of course&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she was mine!&rdquo; he burst out, &ldquo;and these are her cookies, and no
+      mistake. Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she flushed, but more lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Miss Redding,&rdquo; she said with a gentle dignity, &ldquo;Mrs. Wilton's
+      sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared at her vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Wilton&mdash;oh! you're her sister? I didn't know&mdash;&rdquo; He stopped
+      abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't know she had one?&rdquo; she asked, almost mischievously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know you were here,&rdquo; he recovered himself. &ldquo;You've never been
+      with Mrs. Dud before, have you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not here when there was company,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her sister&mdash;her sister,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; with an
+      illuminating smile, &ldquo;I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled and held out her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm very glad to see you,&rdquo; she said cordially. &ldquo;Won't you&mdash;&rdquo; She
+      looked about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've changed since we met last,&rdquo; he remarked, biting into his cooky.
+      She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded
+      thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was six years old then,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and you were one of the 'big boys'&mdash;you
+      were fourteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a long while,&rdquo; he suggested laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is thirty-six years,&rdquo; she replied simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously
+      accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain
+      charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,&rdquo; she said
+      seriously. &ldquo;I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of
+      it. You drank a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;I was born thirsty,&rdquo; he acknowledged. &ldquo;By George, how it
+      comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red thing&mdash;remember
+      how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, and another under
+      that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit on, and we just
+      whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And carved&mdash;Lord! I
+      don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, that was clear! I
+      nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the big girls fainted away,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;and they laid her on the
+      floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I
+      spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was
+      very timid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He began on another cooky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?&rdquo; he inquired, his eyes
+      fixed reminiscently on the hedge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And played some game with stones? I can't just remember&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was houses,&rdquo; she reminded him. &ldquo;We little girls used to make little
+      houses&mdash;just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if
+      you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner
+      on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; It all came back to him. &ldquo;And then you'd race off to get
+      flag-root or something, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what a mite you were, to be in school!&rdquo; he said wonderingly. &ldquo;What
+      under heaven did you study?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't remember at all,&rdquo; she confessed. &ldquo;But I suppose I spelled. Do you
+      remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave off
+      head'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He chuckled. &ldquo;I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would
+      'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of interrupting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the winter, though&mdash;George! but it was cold! We used to
+      positively swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such
+      snows now! How did you get there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only went in the summer,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and I used to come in all stained
+      with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful&rdquo;&mdash;she grew
+      stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and pigtails&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the way to school!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her big
+      apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman&mdash;a lady&mdash;in an apron
+      for years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the&mdash;the mess in the
+      dish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mess&rdquo;&mdash;she bent her brows reprovingly&mdash;&ldquo;it's mayonnaise
+      sauce. But I don't think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee wrung
+      an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!&rdquo; she
+      cried reproachfully. &ldquo;I thought at first it was the craziest thing to do,
+      but I didn't dare say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now you're not afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed again. It was very becoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems&mdash;it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been so
+      long&mdash;we remember so well&mdash;&rdquo; She sighed a little. He studied her
+      face&mdash;so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray
+      eyes, but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes,
+      a more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark
+      shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of tiny
+      wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous regard that
+      her sister's literal directness missed utterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could prevent
+      her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At our age there's no use in running risks,&rdquo; she said simply, &ldquo;you ought
+      not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!&rdquo; he said lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the
+      yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally
+      silly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it have to go in slowly like that&mdash;the whole bottleful?&rdquo; he
+      inquired lazily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded. &ldquo;Or it curdles,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;The cook sprained his wrist
+      yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise&mdash;he can't
+      trust them&mdash;and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good
+      as his. Did you ever see him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, no,&rdquo; Varian returned. &ldquo;But he doesn't need to be seen to be
+      appreciated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange suspicion crept over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you often&mdash;Do you do much&mdash;How is it that you&mdash;&rdquo; He
+      could not say it properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud&mdash;&mdash; It
+      was unworthy of her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their
+      uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,&rdquo; she said quietly. &ldquo;She wanted me
+      to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much society, and
+      I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I used to be. I'd
+      have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but I guess it tires
+      me a little now. There seems to be so much going on all the time. Lizzie
+      says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you find it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all the
+      morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the afternoon&mdash;she
+      preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the dramatics rehearsal,
+      with a poor light, all the evening, while the actors gossiped and
+      squabbled and flirted contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not always restful,&rdquo; he admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes my head ache,&rdquo; she remarked placidly. &ldquo;I like to see the girls
+      enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy&mdash;some of those visiting
+      Lizzie are so pretty!&mdash;but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so
+      much. I'm very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that
+      won't shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me&mdash;a white one
+      that's gentle&mdash;and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The
+      doctor that came that night&mdash;were you here?&mdash;when Mrs. Page
+      fainted and they couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of
+      taking some medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked
+      me if I wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called
+      for a very nice lady&mdash;a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?&mdash;and
+      after that a young girl with spinal trouble, and&mdash;and several others.
+      They seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl
+      that's staying here&mdash;she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl,
+      and I liked her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's
+      astonishing&rdquo;&mdash;her eyes met his wonderingly&mdash;&ldquo;how much trouble
+      you can have, with all the money you want! I&mdash;I was sorry for her,&rdquo;
+       she added, half to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver
+      tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would admire
+      some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How sweet and good you are!&rdquo; he said warmly; and then, to cover her deep
+      embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, &ldquo;Are you
+      very busy in the morning, always?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are different things,&rdquo; she murmured, still looking at her spoon. &ldquo;I
+      have letters to write&mdash;I keep up with a good many old friends in
+      Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years,
+      till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One
+      died; I can't seem to get over it&mdash;&rdquo; Her eyes filled, and she made no
+      effort to cover two tears that slipped over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian took her hand again. &ldquo;I know about that&mdash;I know!&rdquo; he said
+      softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses
+      here,&rdquo; she went on more cheerfully. &ldquo;The gardeners are very kind to me&mdash;I
+      think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good many
+      slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, and
+      there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. They&mdash;the
+      ones I know&mdash;come in for a moment while I mend something, or pin
+      their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to do!
+      They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They talk
+      to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell Lizzie
+      I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when she drops
+      in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my sitting-room
+      every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting&mdash;and I always do.
+      She never makes a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, she's wonderful,&rdquo; Varian agreed easily. &ldquo;There's nobody like Mrs.
+      Dud, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;You all say it&mdash;in just that
+      way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful?
+      Because she looks so young?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, in the first place,&rdquo; Varian returned, with a smile, &ldquo;but not only
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course that is very strange,&rdquo; she mused. &ldquo;Now Lizzie is three years
+      older than I. You would never think it, would you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he agreed, still smiling; &ldquo;but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than
+      everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;is
+      her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and so much
+      better than other people. We try to keep up with things&mdash;your sister
+      is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the very latest
+      thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various affairs&mdash;it
+      makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves a tremendous field to
+      cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so admirably&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But everything is done for her!&rdquo; she protested. &ldquo;Why, I have never yet
+      seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper?
+      Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never
+      sews a stitch&mdash;there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and
+      that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And
+      little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his
+      clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of a
+      man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She
+      lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought,
+      though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet
+      she was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she made that dress, I certainly should!&rdquo; he declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this is only a cotton dress,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But she made my gray silk,
+      too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now my mother,&rdquo; she began, &ldquo;<i>she</i> was wonderful, if you like. Do you
+      know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like
+      yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the cooking&mdash;for
+      all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took care of the hens;
+      she made the candles and the soap; she made the carpets and all our
+      clothes&mdash;my brothers', too; and she put up preserves and jellies and
+      cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I have some of mother's
+      embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was tremendous,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My Aunt Delia did that, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were old-fashioned, even for then,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Everybody didn't do so
+      much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of the
+      new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back to it
+      for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all changed.
+      We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother went to
+      singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the other day,
+      to see what they did&mdash;she wanted it for a party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;That <i>is</i> delicious!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See what I found to-day!&rdquo; she added, drawing a small object from her
+      pocket. &ldquo;I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so interested
+      when I told her about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
+      mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
+      English script. He puzzled it out: <i>A Whig or no Husband!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was mother's,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the girls wore them then. She was quite a
+      belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I say
+      that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and old. She
+      had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little Dudley, and
+      it was so long before he came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
+      burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. The
+      sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, with its
+      delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and cheek. He
+      had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took
+      out his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just time to dress,&rdquo; he sighed. &ldquo;Will you be here again? We must talk old
+      times once more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was
+      still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice him,
+      and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture unbroken;
+      again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his
+      ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at the
+      scene before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
+      that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puss! puss! Here, puss!&rdquo; a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in
+      a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A
+      portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a
+      romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her
+      gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her partner's
+      tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One
+      more before we go in!&rdquo; called the pink girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out&mdash;the colonel's beaten!&rdquo;
+       added Mrs. Dud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, puss! here, puss!&rdquo; With excited little shrieks and laughs they
+      dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
+      Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late, too late!&rdquo; he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
+      purple colonel, he bore him off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,&rdquo;
+       complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the shrubbery.
+      In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned toward each other
+      an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake&mdash;eh,
+      Varian?&rdquo; he said, half serious. &ldquo;It's a poor job, getting old alone. Live
+      at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked
+      again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other fellow's game&mdash;little
+      monotonous after a while, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian nodded. &ldquo;Right enough,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different ending to their route!&rdquo; suggested the colonel, jerking his
+      elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's it!&rdquo; The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
+      his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the
+      hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once
+      he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for
+      gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the
+      deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
+      was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner he
+      secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the gleaming
+      silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, of the woman
+      opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a
+      great vogue among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely
+      too effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he
+      decided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that
+      charmed him particularly&mdash;the feeling of an almost double existence;
+      but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient,
+      restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for
+      his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she
+      realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook
+      himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,&rdquo; he said, a little awkwardly.
+      &ldquo;I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think&mdash;is that the way <i>she</i>
+      looks at it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary?&rdquo; said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. &ldquo;Yes, I suppose so. Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
+      that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am
+      glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
+      so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth do you mean?&rdquo; asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, do you think she would marry me?&rdquo; Varian brought out plumply. &ldquo;Is
+      there&mdash;was there ever anybody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
+      than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
+      the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
+      gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,&rdquo; she answered
+      him, clear-eyed; &ldquo;and there was never,&rdquo; her tone was too sweet, he
+      thought, to carry but one meaning&mdash;pleasure for him, &ldquo;there was never
+      anybody else!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of
+      nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was ready
+      to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of pretty
+      girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among her
+      flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm getting old&mdash;old!&rdquo; he said to himself, but he said it with a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
+      ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced her
+      a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her sunny,
+      busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity. With
+      an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more the
+      blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her, outwardly
+      content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he turned and
+      faced her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
+      flowers,&rdquo; he said pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Flowers? Where?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever we lived,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;And oh, Mary, I think we could be happy
+      together! Don't say no!&rdquo; as she shrank a little. &ldquo;Don't, Mary, for
+      heaven's sake! I care too much&mdash;I care terribly. I am too old a man
+      to care so much and&mdash;lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind.
+      I can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so,
+      and&mdash;But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can plan it out together,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her
+      clear gray eyes would meet his&mdash;her sky-ness was never hesitation&mdash;but
+      he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>