Mary-'Gusta Part 29

Pinckney Street was on the hill in the rear of the Common and the State House and was narrow and crooked and old-fas.h.i.+oned.

"What in the world are we doing up here?" queried Mary-'Gusta. "There aren't any wholesale houses here, I'm sure. Haven't you made a mistake, Uncle Shad?" Shadrach, who had been consulting a page of his pocket memorandum book, replied that he cal'lated he'd got his bearin's, and, to the girl's astonishment, stopped before a brick dwelling with a colonial doorway and a white stone step which actually shone from scrubbing, and rang the bell.

The maid who answered the bell wore a white ap.r.o.n which crackled with starch. She looked as if she too had, like the step, been scrubbed a few minutes before.

"This is No.--, ain't it?" inquired the Captain. "Humph! I thought so.

I ain't so much of a wreck yet but that I can navigate Boston without a pilot. Is Mr. Keith in?"

The maid, who had received the pilot statement with uncomprehending astonishment, looked relieved.

"Yes, sir," she said. "Mr. Keith's here. Are you the ones he's expectin'? Walk in, please."

They entered the house. It was as spotlessly tidy within as without.

The maid ushered them into a parlor where old mahogany and old family portraits in oil were very much in evidence.

"Sit down, please," she said. "I'll tell Mr. Keith you're here."

She left the room. Mary-'Gusta turned to the Captain in amazed agitation.

"Uncle Shad," she demanded, "why on earth did you come HERE to see Mr.

Keith? Couldn't you have seen him at South Harniss?"

Shadrach shook his head. "Not today I couldn't," he said. "He's up here today."

"But what do you want to see him for?"

"Business, business, Mary-'Gusta. Mr. Keith and me are tryin' to do a little stroke of business together. We've got a hen on, as the feller said. Say, this is kind of a swell house, ain't it? And clean--my soul!

Judas! did I move this chair out of place? I didn't mean to. Looks as if it had set right in that one spot for a hundred years."

Keith entered at that moment, followed by an elderly lady whose gown was almost as old-fas.h.i.+oned as the furniture. She was a rather thin person but her face, although sharp, was not unkind in expression and her plainly arranged hair was white. Mary-'Gusta liked her looks; she guessed that she might be very nice indeed to people she knew and fancied; also that she would make certain of knowing them first.

"h.e.l.lo, Captain Gould," hailed Keith. "Glad to see you. Found the place all right, I see."

"Yes--yes, I found it, Mr. Keith."

"I thought you wouldn't have any difficulty. Mary, how do you do?"

Mary-'Gusta and Mr. Keith shook hands.

"Captain," said Keith, "I want to introduce you to my cousin, Mrs.

Wyeth."

Mrs. Wyeth bowed with dignity.

"How do you do, Captain Gould," she said.

"Why--why, I'm pretty smart, thank you, ma'am," stammered Shadrach, rather embarra.s.sed at all this ceremony. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

"And this young lady," went on Keith, "is Miss Mary Lathrop. Miss Lathrop, this lady is Mrs. Wyeth, my cousin."

Mary-'Gusta, with the uneasy feeling that Mrs. Wyeth's gaze had been fixed upon her since she entered the room, bowed but said nothing.

"And now," said Mr. Keith, heartily, "we'll have luncheon. You're just in time and Mrs. Wyeth has been expecting you."

The Captain's embarra.s.sment reached its height at this invitation.

"No, no," he stammered, "we--we can't do that. Couldn't think of it, you know. We--we ain't a mite hungry. Had breakfast afore we left home, didn't we, Mary-'Gusta?"

Keith laughed. "Yes, I know," he said; "and you left home about half-past five. I've taken that early train myself. If you're not hungry you ought to be and luncheon is ready. Emily--Mrs. Wyeth--has been expecting you. She will be disappointed if you refuse."

Mrs. Wyeth herself put in a word here. "Of course they won't refuse, John," she said with decision. "They must be famished. Refuse! The idea!

Captain Gould, Mr. Keith will look out for you; your niece will come with me. Luncheon will be ready in five minutes. Come, Mary. That's your name--Mary--isn't it? I'm glad to hear it. It's plain and it's sensible and I like it. The employment bureau sent me a maid a week ago and when she told me her name I sent her back again. It was Florina. That was enough. Mercy! All I could think of was a breakfast food. Come, Mary.

Now, John, do be prompt."

That luncheon took its place in Mary-'Gusta's memory beside that of her first supper in the house at South Harniss. They were both memorable meals, although alike in no other respects. Mrs. Wyeth presided, of course, and she asked the blessing and poured the tea with dignity and businesslike dispatch. The cups and saucers were of thin, transparent China, with pictures of mandarins and paG.o.das upon them. They looked old-fas.h.i.+oned and they were; Mrs. Wyeth's grandfather had bought them himself in Hongkong in the days when he commanded a clipper s.h.i.+p and made voyages to the Far East. The teaspoons were queer little fiddle-patterned affairs; they were made by an ancestor who was a silversmith with a shop on Cornhill before General Gage's army was quartered in Boston. And cups and spoons and napkins were so clean that it seemed almost sacrilegious to soil them by use.

Captain Shadrach did not soil his to any great extent at first. The Captain was plainly overawed by the genteel elegance of his surrounding and the manner of his hostess. But Mr. Keith was very much at ease and full of fun and, after a time, a little of Shadrach's self-consciousness disappeared. When he learned that grandfather Wyeth had been a seafaring man he came out of his sh.e.l.l sufficiently to narrate, at Keith's request, one of his own experiences in Hongkong, but even in the midst of his yarn he never forgot to address his hostess as "ma'am" and he did not say "Jumpin Judas" once.

After luncheon Mr. Keith and the Captain left the house together.

"Goin' to attend to that little mite of business I spoke to you about, Mary-'Gusta," explained Shadrach, confidentially. "We'll be back pretty soon. I cal'late maybe you'd better wait here, that is," with a glance at Mrs. Wyeth, "if it'll be all right for you to."

"Of course it will be all right," declared Mrs. Wyeth promptly. "I shall be glad to have her."

"Thank you, ma'am. If she won't be in the way I--"

"If she were likely to be in the way I should say so. She won't be."

"Yes--er--yes, ma'am," stammered Shadrach. "Thank you, ma'am."

When he and Mr. Keith were out of the house he drew a long breath.

"Judas!" he observed, feelingly. "Say, that cousin of yours don't waste any words, does she? When it comes to speakin' what's in her mind she don't fool around none. She's as right up and down as a schooner's fo'mast."

Keith laughed heartily. "Emily is blunt and outspoken," he said. "She prides herself on that. But she is as square as a brick. She never says one thing to your face and another behind your back."

"No, I--I judge that's so. Well, that's all right; I ain't got any objections to that way of talkin' myself. But say, if every woman was like her there wouldn't be many sewin' circles, would there? The average sewin' circle meetin' is one part sew and three parts what So-and-so said."

When the little mite of business had been transacted and the pair returned to the Wyeth house they found Mrs. Wyeth and Mary-'Gusta awaiting them in the parlor. The girl had the feeling that she had been undergoing a rather vigorous cross-examination. Mrs. Wyeth had not talked a great deal herself and her manner, though brusque and matter of fact, was kind; but she had asked questions about Mary-'Gusta's home life, about Captain Gould and Mr. Hamilton, about school and friends and acquaintances. And her comments, when she made any, were direct and to the point.

She and Mr. Keith exchanged looks when the latter entered the room.

Keith raised his eyebrows inquiringly. She nodded as if giving emphatic a.s.sent to his unspoken question.

Shadrach and Mary-'Gusta left the house soon afterward. While the Captain and Mr. Keith were whispering together in the hall, Mrs. Wyeth bade the girl good-by.

"I like you, my dear," said the lady. "You seem to be a sweet, sensible girl, and I don't meet as many of that kind nowadays as I could wish. I am sure we shall be good friends."

"And WHAT did she mean by that?" demanded Mary-'Gusta, as she and the Captain walked along Pinckney Street together. "Why should we be good friends? Probably I'll never meet her again."

Shadrach smiled. "Oh, you can't always tell," he said. "Sometimes you meet folks oftener'n you think in this world."