CHAPTER XIX.MISS HANSFORD IN BOSTON.
“I want you up early to-morrow morning, for I am going to take the first boat for Boston,” Miss Hansford said to Elithe, when she came down to tea after Paul had left.
“To Boston!” Elithe repeated.
“Yes, to Boston,” Miss Hansford replied, “to get you some clothes that are clothes. Clarice Percy shan’t twityou any more with being old-fashioned. I’m going to have my gray silk made for Paul’s wedding, and you must have a gown to wear.”
“Oh, auntie, no; even if I am invited, which is doubtful, I do not want to go,” Elithe exclaimed, thinking that nothing could tempt her to see Clarice Percy married.
It was useless to oppose her aunt when her mind was made up, as it was now, and the next day they started for Boston on the early boat. Miss Hansford knew next to nothing of the city, and came near being run over at the crossings two or three times before she reached the Adams House.
“I want two rooms with a door between,—good ones, too,” she said, shaking her head fiercely at the office clerk after registering her own name and Elithe’s.
Naturally they showed her communicating rooms, with a bath, first floor front, looking on Washington Street.
“Oh, this is lovely!” Elithe cried, putting her head from the window and looking up and down the narrow street crowded with cars, vehicles and pedestrians.
It was her first experience in a big city, and she liked it. Her aunt, meanwhile, was haggling over the price of the rooms, which seemed to her exorbitant.
“And pay for what I eat besides? I’ll never do it!” she said to the attendant, who, knowing that he had what he called a case, smiled blandly and replied: “There are cheaper ones higher up and in the rear, but there’s no bath.”
“Bath!” Miss Hansford rejoined. “Who asked for a bath? I didn’t. Show me the rooms.”
They were on the fourth floor looking upon roofs and into a dreary court, and the price was less than half of the apartments they had left.
“Don’t you think these will do?” Miss Hansford asked Elithe, whose face was clouded, but who answered: “Yes, I think they will do.”
Something in her voice and the droop of her eyes betrayed her disappointment, and, after thinking a moment, Miss Hansford said, briskly: “Well, if you do, I don’t. We’ll go back where we came from, bath and all.”
It did not take long for them to get established in their suite, and while Miss Hansford rested upon the easy couch and calculated how long she could afford so expensive accommodations, with all the rest she meant to spend, Elithe was taking in the sights and sounds of the busy, narrow thoroughfare, whose noise nearly drove Miss Hansford wild, but was delightfully exhilarating to her. This was life,—this was the world,—this was Boston, of which she had thought so much and dreamed so often in her home among the Rockies, and she would willingly have sat all day watching the ever-changing panorama in front of the hotel. But her aunt had other business on hand than counting cars and carriages and people. She was there to shop, and the sooner they were at it the better. It took her the remainder of that day and a part of the next before she was fairly launched. She visited Jordan and Marsh’s, and White’s, and Hollander’s, one after the other, telling them what she wanted, getting prices and samples for comparison, and sometimes making Elithe blush for her brusque, decided ways, which amused the clerks greatly. At each establishment she called for thehead man, and told him she was going to run up a big bill and pay on the spot. She wanted several outfits for her niece, all of the best kind and latest style; nothing last year’s would answer, and she should trade where she could get the best material and the best attention.
“I don’t like the manners of some of your help, whisperin’ and nudgin’ each other,” she continued, with a wave of her hands towards two or three young girls, who could not keep from smiling at “the queer woman talking so funny to their boss.”
After this the lady was treated with the utmost deference, and the clerks nearly knocked each other down to serve her. After a good many trips back and forth from one store to another, and becoming so bewildered with prices and quality and style that she scarcely knew what she was about, or what she wanted, she decided to “stick to one place, if they cheated her eye-teeth out, as she presumed they would.” The suave floor-walker rubbed his hands together,—told her how delighted he was at having her patronage,—assured her that nowhere would she be better pleased or get more for her money, and then handed her over to the Philistines.
For the next three or four days she was a conspicuous figure in the establishment, where the “queer old woman and beautiful girl” came to be well known by sight and freely commented upon. She wanted everything “up to the mark, and was going the whole figger,” she said. Everybody was eager to wait upon her, and overwhelmed her with so many suggestions and assurances of what was fashionable that she might have defeated her own purpose if Elithe had not come to the rescue. She knew what young girls wore better than her aunt, who gave the matter up to her, telling her to get what she pleased regardless of expense.
“I want you to have sailor hats, and big sleeves, and Eton jackets, and yellow shoes, and tan gloves, and shirt waists, and ties, and bathing suits, and yachting suits andevening gowns, and all that. Beat Clarice Percy, if you can,” she said.
Fortunately Elithe knew that what was proper for the future bride of Paul Ralston was not suitable for her. She had no use for a bathing suit. She had taken her first and last bath in the ocean. She had no use for a yachting dress, which had been suggested to her aunt as essential to a complete outfit. Neither had she any use for an evening dress, such as her aunt wished her to get. A pretty, white muslin, with quantities of soft lace upon it, was the most she would consent to, and she made her other selections with taste and discretion.
Relieved of care for Elithe, who evinced a wonderful aptitude to run herself, Miss Hansford gave her attention to her gray silk, striking, fortunately, a dressmaker who had worked for Mrs. Ralston, and knew all about the grand wedding in prospect. She also had in her parlors two or three dresses belonging to parties who were going to Oak City in advance of the occasion.
“Why, they are to room with me,” Miss Hansford exclaimed, when she heard their names. “They must be about my age.”
This reconciled her to certain innovations in her dress as to what was suitable for her.
“I’m sixty-five years old, and I can’t have too many curlycues,” she said, but after seeing the dresses of women as old or older than she was, with Y-shaped necks and elbow sleeves, she gave herself into the modiste’s hands and came out a surprise to herself.
“Why, auntie, you look real handsome and young,” Elithe exclaimed, with delight, when the dress was tried on in their rooms at the hotel.
“I look like an old fool trying to be young,” Miss Hansfordresponded, examining herself critically before the glass and declaring the demi-train too long, the skirt too wide and the sleeves too big. On the whole, however, she was satisfied, and, folding her dress carefully, laid it in one of the large packing boxes necessary to hold all her purchases. Her shopping expedition had been very successful, and she only rebelled mentally at her hotel bill for rooms. She paid it, however, and just a week from the day she left Oak City, she sailed up to the wharf in the afternoon boat, poorer by some hundred dollars, but happy in the thought that no one could find a flaw in Elithe’s costume, which was as faultless as a Boston tailor could make it. “Elithe could hold her head with the best of them,” she thought, as she walked behind her through the crowd always down to see the boat come in, and felt her heart swell with pride as she saw how many turned to look at the young girl so transformed that Paul, who was at the landing, did not at first recognize her. He had stopped at the cottage every day during the week, and had been disappointed when he found it closed each time. Something was missing which made his life at that particular period very happy. To bathe with Clarice, to drive with her, to wheel with her, to waltz with her and sit with her on the beach, looking out upon the great ocean, listening to its constant beat upon the sands and talking of the future opening so bright before them was very delightful, and kept him up to fever heat, except when he came down from the Elysian heights and spent a half hour with Elithe. She rested him, and he liked to hear her talk of a kind of life he had never known, but which, as she described it, seemed rather attractive than otherwise. She told him of the miners at Deep Gulch; of the pony they gave her and the rides on Sunday through the wild cañons to the camp where her father held service,and of her once staying there all night with a sick man, who was recovering from delirium tremens. She did not tell him who it was, nor did he ask her. She usually did the most of the talking while he watched her glowing face and her eyes brightening and widening as she talked, and then drooping modestly when she caught him looking at her admiringly, as he often did. He liked to see the color in her cheeks change from a delicate rose tint to a brilliant hue, as she laughed and chatted and grew excited or interested. Clarice seldom or never blushed; Elithe blushed all the time, and he liked it. He was interested in every pretty girl. Elithe was more than pretty and of an entirely different type from most of the young ladies whom he knew and who held rather loose views with regard to what young men should be. To befastwas nothing; to drink was nothing, if their vices were kept in the background, or covered over with gold. Not to drink,—not to be fast,—was no recommendation. Paul neither drank nor was fast in the usual acceptation of the term, but the money at his back atoned for these deficiences, and Clarice had accepted him gladly, feeling sure she could soon cure him of his Puritanical notions and bring him up to her plane of morals. To a certain extent he was already being influenced by her in the wrong direction, when Elithe came into his life, becoming so much a part of it that the days when he did not see her lacked something which had become necessary to him. During the week she was gone he went to meet every boat, hoping to find her on it, and felt disappointed when she was not there. What was her aunt doing in Boston so long, he wondered, and once half made up his mind to go to the city and find out. It was rather a strange phase of affairs for a young man soon to be married to one girl to be thinking so much of another, but Paul didnot analyze his feelings, and was inexpressibly glad when he at last ran against Elithe on the wharf, thinking her a stranger at first, and saying, “I beg pardon, Miss.”
He had been looking for a blue flannel dress and hat with faded ribbons and tarnished red wing, and, not finding it, was turning away, when he backed against Elithe.
“Why, Elithe,” he said, offering her his hand and taking her new satchel from her. “Why did you stay so long? It seems an age since you went away. It does, upon my soul. Hallo, Aunt Phebe! How are you? Let me take that bag.”
It was not as fine looking as Elithe’s; it was old and glazed and black, and her umbrella was a cotton one loosely rolled up, but he took them both and looked like a hotel porter, as he walked beside the ladies, wondering why Elithe seemed different and more like the young girls he was to meet that afternoon at the tennis grounds on Oceanside. It dawned upon him just as the cottage was reached and he was waiting for Miss Hansford to unlock the door. Dropping the bags and umbrellas and laying his hand familiarly upon Elithe’s shoulder, he said: “I say, arn’t we gotten up swell since we went to Boston? That hat is awfully becoming to you, and that thing-em-er-jig,” indicating the front of her shirt waist. “Somebody has done you up brown.”
“Is she all right?” Miss Hansford asked, beaming with delight at Paul’s commendation.
“All right? I should say she was. I haven’t seen such a stunner this season,” Paul replied, warming with his subject, while Elithe blushed scarlet and tried to divert his attention from herself.
Paul was not to be diverted. He had heard Clarice criticise her dress, and, with his attention thus called to it, had himself thought it old-fashioned and plain. All this waschanged, and the metamorphosis so complete that he wished to show her off to his acquaintance. Following her into the cottage, he said: “The club play at the tennis court on Oceanside this afternoon. I’ll stop for you after tea if you will go. There’s lots of fun.”
Elithe replied that she didn’t play tennis, and didn’t know the young people.
“Come and know them, then,” Paul said. “No matter if you don’t play. Plenty of them sit round and look on.”
He was very urgent and persuasive and at last, encouraged by her aunt, who was nearly as anxious for her to be seen in her new feathers as Paul, she concluded to go if she were not too tired after supper.