Elsie Marley, Honey Part 8

The library was only the more engaging that day. Mattie Howe came in early and they went through a number of shelves in the children's department together in selecting her book. Then Elsie took the little girl in her lap--in a curiously easy fas.h.i.+on--and they looked at the colored pictures in a large book that did not circulate until some one else came in and claimed the librarian's attention.

A roguish-looking boy with a tousled head entered, stared at Elsie in amazement, and went abruptly out. Returning a little later with s.h.i.+ning face and wet, parted hair, as he asked at the desk for a book, he spread out a pair of very clean hands in a manner intended to be nonchalant. He was ready and eager to talk and very amusing. Before Elsie got through with him, she had a.s.sured him that she meant to read "Robinson Crusoe" within the next fortnight.

Then a lad apparently of about her own age, a high-school boy, shy, but with very gentle manners, who started as if to retreat as he saw her, gathered his courage, returned his book, and stood there undecided.

"Do you want another book?" Elsie asked.

"Have you got anything about Edison?" he asked. "I've got to write a composition about electricity, and I thought I might start with him."

Elsie consulted the catalogue, but greatly to her disappointment was unable to find anything. The boy had such nice manners and such honest, deep-set eyes that she wanted to help him.

"You might start with Benjamin Franklin," she suggested, not very confidently.

"Sure!" he returned, smiling frankly. She got him a biography of Franklin, and he sat down at one of the tables with note-book and pencil and was soon deep in it.

There were a number of references to Franklin in the catalogue, and as Elsie went back to it to see if she might have made a better choice, she saw that one referred to the proper volume of a "Dictionary of American Scientists." It came to her that she might discover Edison in the same place. She was pleased to find several pages of a recent volume of the work devoted to that inventor. She carried it to the boy and pointed out the pages with a feeling of satisfaction almost like triumph.

The afternoon flew. She closed the library regretfully, for she never expected to enter it again. For to-morrow was Sat.u.r.day, and if she should stay beyond the afternoon, it would mean she could not get away until Monday. And that she could never stand. For she had gathered somehow that Mrs. Middleton made a special effort to sit up all Sunday except during the time her husband was at church. If it was mostly a case of nerves, Miss Stewart might as well come back one day as another.

But again at dinner Mrs. Middleton was absent from her place. She sent a special request to Elsie to occupy it, and Elsie spent a very happy half-hour telling Mr. Middleton about the happenings of the afternoon, hearing his explanatory comment on persons and things, and serving the pudding. And when he told her he had seen Miss Stewart, who thought she would hardly feel like coming back until Monday, and had a.s.sured her that his niece would be glad to take her place another day, Elsie was quite undisturbed.

CHAPTER XII

Elsie Marley was very tired as she locked the door of the library Sat.u.r.day night and started for _home_, as she caught herself calling the parsonage. She had been there the greater part of the day. She had spoken to Mr. Middleton at breakfast of going over to familiarize herself somewhat with the encyclopaedias and reference-books, and he had asked her to look up certain pa.s.sages and verify one or two quotations for him. The latter proved a more difficult task for the girl than the clergyman would have dreamed; but she was very happy in doing it, gratified, too, to realize that her handwriting was very clear as well as pretty. And the single cause of her dismay when he thanked and praised her and referred to her mother--or his sister--was that she should not be on hand to help him another Sat.u.r.day.

The afternoon had been a very busy one, every one in town, seemingly, old, young, and middle-aged, desiring a book for Sunday. A goodly number of girls of near her age came in, sweet-faced girls who, though they couldn't compare with Elsie Moss (who was, however, in a cla.s.s by herself), seemed more attractive than those she had seen at home. The tall boy who was interested in electricity came again and greeted her shyly, though rather as if they were old friends. Later, older girls and young men who worked in Boston during the week dropped into the library to inquire for the latest novel or to spend part of their half-holiday looking over the picture papers and magazines. All were extremely cordial and friendly. Without actually overhearing anything, Elsie, who wasn't at all quick in regard to matters of that sort, understood, somehow, that there was more or less comparison between herself and the regular librarian, which was not altogether complimentary to Miss Stewart.

As she went up the walk shortly after six o'clock, the girl saw some one gazing out of the window of the room she had first entered four days ago, and recalled her first view, which seemed now far back in the past. There was no one there when she went in, however, and as she realized that the place had not been touched since her arrival, suddenly the glow of satisfaction that had cloaked her weariness changed to wrath. She flew to her room for refuge.

And now real wrath descended upon her. For she found it as she had left it that morning. The bed was not made; her nightgown was on the floor, and the clothes she had worn yesterday scattered about on the chairs. Her brown eyes looked darker and there was a hint of color in her cheeks as she ran down to the kitchen and confronted Kate amid the chaos and confusion of her own domain.

"Katy, my bed hasn't been made, nor my room done to-day," she cried.

"Bless my soul, I clean forgot it," said Kate in real consternation.

"I'll go right up this very minute as soon as I've cast my eyes on the oven, though, to tell you the truth, my feet ache like the toothache."

Elsie's feet ached, too, for the first time in her life. Wherefore she partly understood. Her indignation died out.

"Oh, don't bother then, Katy," she said kindly, "I can sleep on the couch to-night. And to-morrow, perhaps, you'll do it early before your feet get tired?"

Kate insisted upon going. "No, you don't sleep on no sofy; not while I can crawl about," she declared, and Elsie followed her up-stairs.

Watching her from her chair by the window, the girl saw that she looked tired, indeed.

"I could have slept on the couch, Katy," she protested.

Kate looked at her--frowned--then smiled.

"Oh, Miss Elsie, a body'd know you lost your mother young. Now if I'd 'a' forgot your uncle's bed, he'd 'a' made it hisself and said nothing.

There's many young ladies as makes their own beds, and does all but the heavy sweepin'. I don't suppose you ever did such a thing in your life?"

Elsie confessed that she hadn't. She didn't say that it seemed a burden to turn down the covers. Again Kate frowned and smiled.

Clearly Miss Moss wasn't one to take a hint.

"How would you like to _learn_?" she inquired.

"Oh, I never thought," said Elsie. "Why, yes, of course, if you'll teach me some time, I'll do it every day after I get so that I can."

For the moment she had forgotten her stay was to be so limited.

"Bless you, you'll learn in no time; it's nothing to do," Kate a.s.sured her beamingly. "Come here, right now."

Somewhat taken aback, Elsie complied. She was surprised to find that it wasn't difficult nor even unpleasant.

"You see, Miss Elsie, I can't never go about my work and finish one thing before I take up another," Kate explained. "I'm up and down these stairs, up and down, up and down, from mornin' till night, a-waitin' on the missus. When it ain't eggnog, it's beef-tea or gruel, and then again it'll be frosted cake, icing that thick, upon my word and honor! And once she gets hold of me, I have to stay and tell her all the news I get from the grocer and the butcher's boy, and who goes by and what they has on. Not that I don't admire bein' sociable, and I can't help havin' a motherly feelin' for one old enough to be my mother; but I don't get no chance to redd up nowhere except the dinin'-room and his study. And then you know, I ain't no general housework girl, anyways, I've always cooked before; but here I have to do everything, besides waitin' on a woman as isn't any sicker than what I be. If you knew the money she spends on choc'late creams and headache powders and the trashy novels she reads, you'd wonder she ain't even yellower than what she is."

The next morning Elsie set about trying to do her own room. Before she had reached the point of attacking the bed, she had decided that she could save herself a great deal of work by putting things away when she took them off or used them, instead of dropping them, as she had always done, for some one else to pick up. Kate came in and insisted upon helping with the bed.

"But, Katy, don't you want to get ready for church?" Elsie suddenly thought to inquire.

"I went to early ma.s.s this mornin', miss. I declare to goodness, I'm that shabby that I don't like to appear out in broad daylight."

"Why, Katy, what do you do with all your money? Do you have parents to support?"

"No'm, I'm an orphan. But I don't have any ready money, and I don't like to take what little I have out of the savings-bank. I ain't been paid my wages sence Christmas."

Elsie was aghast. "But why don't you ask for them?" she cried.

"I do. And she keeps a-promisin', but money slips right through her fingers. I don't like to go to himself about it, because I hate to upset him, and then she's good to me, and I know them headache powders makes her forgetful. I don't know where the money goes: she has a fistful the first of every month, but she owes bills to everybody in town except the undertaker. What I'm afraid of is as some of 'em'll go to himself. The ice man is gettin' as sa.s.sy as he can live."

Elsie was shocked beyond expression. The situation would have seemed inconceivable except that anything was conceivable in connection with Mrs. Middleton. The girl had almost forgotten that she was departing shortly, but realizing it, she was the more relieved. Only it would be all the harder for Elsie Moss.

Still, even so, she found she couldn't dismiss the matter thus.

Somehow her heart went out to that careless, slipshod, kindly, Irish Kate. Before she went to church, she slipped into the kitchen and insisted upon her accepting fifteen dollars to get herself some clothes before the next Sunday. And when Kate flatly refused to take the money, she developed a curious resourcefulness. She declared that unless she took it, she should go to her uncle and ask him to inquire into the question of her unpaid wages. And Kate succ.u.mbed.

After service, Elsie sat down to write to Elsie Moss. She didn't say anything she had meant to say. She knew she ought at least to give her some intimation of the situation, lest the other should be wholly unprepared and enter perhaps upon some course that must be rudely interrupted by the end of another week. But she wasn't clever enough for that.

She spoke of the place and the people and how much she liked them. She told of the three afternoons in the library, and remembering how the other had taken to the children on the train, tried, in her stiff, constrained way, to describe little Mattie Howe, who minded the baby all his waking hours and read a Prudy book a day.

She couldn't even mention Mrs. Middleton. She spoke freely of Elsie's uncle--almost enthusiastically, indeed--told how he had asked if she had toothache, and signed herself, rather abruptly, "Your loving friend, Elsie M----."

The following morning she found a letter on her plate. She had gone by the name of Moss nearly a week, yet it gave her a start to see the address and to break open the envelope.

It was a bright, amusing letter, as informal as her own had been stiff.

Elsie Moss found Cousin Julia no end jolly, a perfect brick. The boarding-house was the most interesting place she had ever known, and the people just right; and though New York was stifling she loved it, and wasn't the least in a hurry to get to the sh.o.r.e. She expected very soon to confide her ambition to Miss Pritchard--honestly, she was so dear and splendid, that it was the greatest wonder that she hadn't told her she wanted to be an actress before they left the Grand Central Station. . . .