Two years later, this steady friend dropped in to see the sisters on a gloomy afternoon in February. The light from the front windows made long, clean cuts in the clinging yellow fog without, across the rimy pavement to the carriage, with its liveried coachman and fine horses. Passers-by, on their way to humble homes, lifted eyelids beaded with the icy damp, and thought how lucky were the dwellers in the stately house; how much-to-be envied the guest who rode in state above the mire of the common ways. Those who recognized the liveries, and knew whose was the dwelling, pondered, more or less wonderingly, upon the incongruity of the unabated intimacy, and speculated, perhaps, upon the probabilities that the Harding pride would have revolted at a matrimonial alliance between a scion of their house and one of the “reduced” family, for all Mrs. Horatio’s show of friendship. It was a lucky thing, decided eight out of ten of those who considered the matter, that young Walford had not committed himself irrevocably before the “misfortune” that showed him how near he was to the edge of the abyss. He had made a desirable match last fall, and was now travelling in Europe with his heiress bride.
Little cared guest or hostesses what the outside world thought or believed respecting their intercourse. Emma’s boys were building block houses on the back parlor floor. The three sisters were gathered about the centre-table in the other room, talking in low voices over their work. Mrs. Harding stopped in the doorway on seeing their grave faces, and that they were making blackcrêpebonnets.
“A mourning order!” she said, in her unceremonious way. “Anybody that I know?”
“Not an order exactly,” explained Imogen, when they had welcomed her. “But poor Mr. Sibthorpe has gone at last, and Blanche proposed that we should spare the widow and three unmarried daughters the expense of bonnets and veils; so we are making them and the widow’s caps out of work hours. We do our charity work at such odd times you know—and together.
“You are the Blessed Three Sisters—thateverybody knows!” uttered the visitor. “I don’t believe Icouldset a stitch for that tribe of lazy locusts! Amelia, the married one, is no better. Her husband failed awhile ago, as you may remember, and she is too proud to help him in the small haberdasher’s shop he has lately set up; sits at home like a—I won’t say lady—but an idiotic automaton—”
“Who ever heard of an intellectual one?” laughed Blanche.
“No pertness, miss! I don’t pick my terms when I am excited. She sits in the small parlor over the store, as I was saying, and curries favor with wealthy and charitable ladies by cutting sponge and velvet into monkey and black-and-tan terrier pen-wipers for fancy fairs. What are the Sibthorpe’s going to do, now that the man they murdered among them is dead?”
“His life was insured”—began Emma.
“Humph!” interrupted Mrs. Harding. “You needn’t proceed. They will eat the insurance up to the last dollar, and by that time the boys will be big enough to divide the women among them; to carrythem bodily—their expenses, that is—as we see ants running about with egg sacs bigger than themselves on their shoulders. I know the old, hideous story by heart. Drop the subject.”
“Let me give you a piece of news that will entertain you better,” said Blanche, merrily. “One of the Payne girls—Sophia, the youngest—is going to marry a widower with eight children—all at home.”
“Serves her right! But I am sorry for the children. Go on!”
“The happy man is a Mr. Gregorias, of Spanish extraction. He is small and withered, and reported to be rich as cream. So Arethusa says. The wedding dress is to be of white satin, with point lace veil and flounces—the gift of the groom.”
“Have you undertaken the trousseau?” queried Mrs. Harding, fixing her keen gaze upon Imogen.
“No,” she answered, coloring as she smiled. “I have declined making any engagements for the spring. I am going abroad for a year in May, and Blanche does not want a stranger here in my place.”
“Markham Burkeisthe man, then! My love! I congratulate you with all my heart. I have been on thorns all winter about you and the noble fellow. I was afraid you had some Quixotic notions that would stand in the way of his happiness and yours.”
“No; why should I have?” rejoined thefiancée, speaking quietly and sensibly. “We are not vowed to our trades, or to celibacy. Markham says there is no need that he, with his ample means, should let me keep up my business. Whatever I have made, he insists upon settling upon me. He would have had me divideit all between Blanche and Emma, but they would not allow it.”
“I should hope not!” cried Blanche, energetically. “Two women who can take care of themselves!’”
“Blanche will enlarge her department,” continued Imogen, “now that I will leave her room. You should hear her plans of making a temple of art—not of fashion alone—in these two parlors. It will be very beautiful. She can afford to indulge her taste in these respects. She is making money.”
“Means to be a nabob-ess before she dies—or marries,” interjected the youngest sister.
“You are a mercenary witch,” said Mrs. Harding. “Emma, Mr. Harding says your lots are rising in value fast, and the price of land in that quarter of the city is sure to increase with tenfold rapidity during the next dozen years. He would not advise you to close with the offer made you last week, unless you need the money.”
“Thank you and him!” replied the young widow. “I am not anxious to sell. Let it grow for the boys. It belongs to them. The rest of us are provided for. Even for mamma there is enough and to spare. We have never been tempted by the various straits of poverty and shabby gentility to wish for our father’s death, that we might profit byhislife-insurance policy. Feeble as he is, his cheerfulness, his patience and affection for us all, make his a very bright presence in our home. It is a priceless comfort to us all that he is not compelled, when he needs them most, to relinquish the home and luxuries he toiled so long and bravely to obtain for us.”
“You can’t imagine what pride and delight he takes in the boys!” exclaimed Blanche. “We really hope he may live to see them grown.”
“It is the story of the old storks and their young, to the life,” said Mrs. Harding to her husband that night. “I used to think it a fable. I believe now that it is true, out and out!”