A Little Country Girl Part 7

"No; that is decidedly _wrong_. When Miss Beebe married, she became not only Mrs. Gordon, but Mrs. George Gordon, to distinguish her from any other Mrs. Gordons who might happen to exist. She should _sign_ herself 'Sarah B. Gordon,' but her letters and cards should bear her married name, 'Mrs. George Gordon.'"

"But people do write to widows in that way, don't they?" asked Gertrude.

"I recollect, when I went to the post-office with Berry Joy one day, there was a letter for her mother, directed to Mrs. Louisa Bailey Joy."

"Yes; people do, but not the people who know the right way," her mother replied dryly. "A man's Christian name doesn't die with him any more than his surname. I often see letters addressed to Mrs. Jane this and Mrs. Maria that, but it never seems to me either correct or elegant. It is a purely American custom. English people have never adopted it, and it seems very odd to them."

"Well, about cards," continued Marian, who was turning over the leaves of the "Manual of Gentility." "See what a funny little card this is; and the writer of the book says it is the kind we ought to have." She pointed to a page on which appeared a little oblong enclosure bearing the name

+----------------------+ _Fannie C. Jones._ +----------------------+

"That isn't nice a bit, is it, mamma?"

"No, I confess that it does not look to me at all right. Girls old enough to need cards are old enough to have 'handles to their names.' If I were that young woman I should spell 'f.a.n.n.y' without the _ie_, and call myself 'Miss Frances C. Jones' on my card, and keep my pet name for the use of my friends, and not print it."

"I think I've learned a good deal to-day," said Candace. "The funny old book isn't right in what it says, but Cousin Kate knows; so it comes to the same thing in the end. I'm glad you gave it to me, Gertrude."

Gertrude had the grace to feel ashamed, as she saw Candace's perfect freedom from shame.

"Oh, dear! how much there is to learn!" continued Candace, with a sigh.

She was still deep in the "Ladies' Manual of Perfect Gentility."

"Put away that book, Cannie," said her cousin; "or give it to me, and I will hide it where Gertrude shall not find it again. Good breeding can be learned without printed rules."

"Can it, mamma?"

"Yes; for, as I was saying this morning to Gertrude, good manners are the result of good feeling. If we really care about other people, and want to make them happy, and think of them and not of ourselves, we shall instinctively do what will seem pleasant to them, and avoid doing what is disagreeable. We shall refrain from interrupting them when they are speaking. We shall not half listen to what they say, while our eyes are roving about the room, and our attention wandering to other things.

We shall be quick to notice if they want anything that we can get for them. We shall not answer at random, or giggle, or say the wrong thing.

We shall not loll back in our chairs, as Georgie is doing at this moment, with one foot c.o.c.ked over the other knee, and a paint-brush in our mouths."

"Mamma!" And Georgie hastily recovered the upright position, and took her paint-brush from between her lips.

"We shall not drum idly on window-panes, as Gertrude was doing just now, for fear that the little noise will be disagreeable to our neighbors."

"Now, mamma!"

"We shall not walk carelessly between any one and the fire, because we shall be afraid of making them cold; nor shall we upset a work-basket while doing so, as Marian upset mine just now."

"Mamma, I do believe you are giving us all a scolding; I shall just stop you." And Marian flung her arms round her mother's neck, and gave her half a dozen enormous kisses.

"We shall consider a kiss as a favor," went on Mrs. Gray, inexorably, holding Marian off at arm's length, "not a punishment to be inflicted whenever we happen to feel like it. We shall never trot one foot when we are nervous, and shake the table."

"Cannie, that's you. I thought it would be your turn soon," said Marian.

"Oh! did I trot?" said Cannie. "Please excuse me, Cousin Kate. I have such a bad habit of doing that. Aunt Myra says it's my safety-valve."

"If it's a safety-valve, it's all very well," replied her cousin. "I didn't know. In short, my dears, as the poet says,--

'Manners are not idle, but the fruit Of n.o.ble nature and of lofty mind.'

The instinct of self-control, of gentleness, of consideration and forethought and quick sympathy, which go to make up what we call good breeding; the absence of noise and hurry, the thousand and one little ways by which we can please people, or avoid displeasing them,--are all taught us by our own hearts. Good manners are the fine flower of civilization. And everybody can have them. I always say that one of the best-bred men of my acquaintance is Mr. Jarvis, the mason. I have known him come up out of a cistern to speak to me, dressed in overalls and a flannel s.h.i.+rt; and his bow and his manner and the politeness of his address would have done credit to any gentleman in the world."

"Mamma, how funny you are," said Georgie, wonderingly; but Gertrude caught her mother's meaning more clearly.

"I rather like it," she said slowly. "It sounds like something in a poem or a storybook, and it would be nice if everybody felt like that, but people don't. I've heard Mrs. Joy speak quite rudely to Mr. Jarvis, mamma."

"Very likely. I never have considered Mrs. Joy as a model of manners,"

replied Mrs. Gray, coolly. "And that reminds me to say just one other word about good breeding toward servants and people who work for us, or are poor and need our help. Gentleness and politeness are even more important with them than they are with other people."

"Why more, mamma?"

"Because their lives are harder than ours, and we owe them all the little help that courtesy can give. Because, too, we are their models, consciously or unconsciously, and if we are polite to them they will in return be polite to us. And besides, they meet us at a disadvantage. If a servant 'answers back,' she is called impertinent and discharged; but I should think it must be rather hard _not_ to answer back to some mistresses."

"Is that why you are always so very polite to Jane?" asked Gertrude.

Jane was the cook.

"Yes, partly that; and partly because I want Jane to be very polite to me; and she always is."

"There is the sun at last, I do declare," cried Marian, springing up.

"Hurrah! I should think it was time. Now we shall have some nice weather, Cannie. Newport is lovely after a fog. It looks so nicely washed, and so green. Mamma, couldn't we have a long drive this afternoon in the wagonette, across the beaches and way round by the windmill? I like that drive so much."

"Yes; and at dinner we will eat Cannie's health in her birthday cake. It is making now, and Jane has the seventeen little pink candles all ready.

How the fog is rolling away! It will be a charming afternoon."

CHAPTER V.

DOWN TO BEAVER TAIL.

SUNDAY morning brought the fresh, lovely stillness which Sundays in early summer seem always to possess in Newport. Later in the season the roll of wheels and the jingle of plated harnesses come to mar this peacefulness; but till the very end of June it endures, and is one of the sweet things of the place.

The Joys were at breakfast. It was one of the points in which Mrs. Joy took most pride, that this meal was served in a special apartment known as the breakfast-room, and not, as with most families, in the room where they dined. The breakfast-room was not large, but sumptuous in all its appointments. A critical taste might have objected that the plush curtains which shaded the windows were too heavy for summer; that the begilded wallpaper "swore" a little at its own dado and frieze, as well as deadened the effect of the pictures which hung against it; and that the drapery of lace and velvet which veiled the fireplace made a fire inconvenient and almost impossible, however cold the weather might be.

But a critical taste might have found the same faults with the whole house. The general effect was of costliness and magnificence; but the details were at variance, and comfort and homelikeness had been sacrificed in the effort to make everything fine. There was a library, with almost no books in it; a ball-room, which was used only for b.a.l.l.s, and looked bare and shut up on ordinary days; a huge drawing-room, full of costly toys,--tables loaded with Sevres cups, other tables with processions of pug-dogs in precious china, snuff-boxes, patch-boxes; chimney-piece crowded with porcelain figures and bits of old Dresden ware; there was a great deal of carving and _or-moulu_,--but it all had the air of being created and kept for company use, and deserted the moment company went away. Mrs. Joy had only got so far in her art education as this, that she bought everything which cost a great deal of money and which her neighbors bought, and she never stopped to reason about such minor points as taste, fitness, convenience, or the adaptation of an article to her own particular needs.

Mrs. Joy was the very image of a prosperous woman, as she sat behind her heavy silver coffee-pots and cream-jugs, reading the Sunday paper, to get which her groom had ridden a couple of miles before breakfast. Her very black hair was trained into a line of formal rings across her forehead, which as yet scarcely showed a wrinkle. Her tightly laced figure was almost as slender as her daughter's; and the hand sparkling with diamonds, which held the paper, was white and youthful. Handsome she certainly was; and people called her agreeable, for she talked a great deal, in a noisy, lively way, and had a caressing manner for all persons whom she thought it worth her while to caress. But her face was hard; and when the society smile died out of it, it was neither intelligent nor kindly. Mrs. Joy had been extremely pretty in her youth.

Berenice was like her; but Tom Joy the son resembled his father, who had died three or four years before the opening of this little story.

Berry and her friend Ethel Curtis were talking about a sailing party which they had planned for the next day.

"The Grays and the Halletts, and Julia Prime, that makes seven; mamma for matron, eight; then there's Tom and George Rivington, and the two Fosters. I can't think where we are to get the other three men."

"It isn't like a dinner party. The numbers need not be exactly equal,"

suggested Ethel.

"That's true, but it's a great deal better fun to have them equal. Men hate to talk to two girls at once, and the girls who haven't any men to talk to feel left out. Carrol Benton is coming up the end of the week; I wish he were here now."

"I guess you'd better look up some other matron, and let me off," said Mrs. Joy, laying down her newspaper. "I don't care much for sailing. I'm so apt to feel a little sick, and that spoils all the pleasure of it.