"I never saw such bright people in all my life!" said Ada Geoffrey, when the outcry of applause for Dorris had subsided, and they began to rise to go. "But the _worst_ of all is papa! I'll never get over it of you, see if I do! Such a cheat! Why, it's like playing dumb all your life, and then just speaking up suddenly in a quiet way, some day, as if it was nothing particular, and n.o.body cared!"

With Hazel's little divining-rod, Mrs. Ripwinkley had reached out, testing the world for her, to see what some of it might be really made of. Mrs. Geoffrey, from her side, had reached out in turn, also, into this fresh and simple opportunity, to see what might be there worth while.

"How was it, Aleck?" she asked of her husband, as they sat together in her dressing-room, while she brushed out her beautiful hair.

"Brightest people I have been among for a long time--and nicest,"

said the banker, concisely. "A real, fresh little home, with a mother in it. Good place for Ada to go, and good girls for her to know; like the ones I fell in love with a hundred years ago."

"That rhymed oracle,--to say nothing of the _fraction_ of a compliment,--ought to settle it," said Mrs. Geoffrey, laughing.

"Rhymes have been the order of the evening. I expect to talk in verse for a week at least."

And then he told her about the "Crambo."

A week after, Mrs. Ledwith was astonished to find, lying on the mantel in her sister's room, a card that had been sent up the day before,--

"MRS. ALEXANDER H. GEOFFREY."

XI.

MORE WITCH-WORK.

Hazel was asked to the Geoffreys' to dinner.

Before this, she and Diana had both been asked to take tea, and spend an evening, but this was Hazel's little especial "invite," as she called it, because she and Ada were writing a dialogue together for a composition at school.

The Geoffreys dined at the good old-fashioned hour of half past two, except when they had formal dinner company; and Hazel was to come right home from school with Ada, and stay and spend the afternoon.

"What intimacy!" Florence Ledwith had exclaimed, when she heard of it.

"But it isn't at all on the grand style side; people like the Geoffreys do such things quite apart from their regular connection; it is a sort of 'behind the scenes;'" said Glossy Megilp, who was standing at Florence's dressing-gla.s.s, touching up the little heap of "friz" across her forehead.

"Where's my poker?" she asked, suddenly, breaking off from the Geoffrey subject, and rummaging in a dressing box, intent upon tutoring some little obstinate loop of hair that would be _too_ frizzy.

"I should think a 'blower' might be a good thing to add to your tools, Glossy," said Desire. "You have brush, poker, and tongs, now, to say nothing of coal-hod," she added, glancing at the little open j.a.panned box that held some kind of black powder which had to do with the shadow of Glossy's eyelashes upon occasion, and the emphasis upon the delicate line of her brows.

"No secret," said Glossy, magnanimously. "There it is! It is no greater sin than violet powder, or false tails, for that matter; and the little gap in my left eyebrow was never deliberately designed.

It was a 'lapsus naturae;' I only follow out the hint, and complete the intention. Something _is_ left to ourselves; as the child said about the Lord curling her hair for her when she was a baby and letting her do it herself after she grew big enough. What are our artistic perceptions given to us for, unless we're to make the best of ourselves in the first place?"

"But it isn't all eyebrows," said Desire, half aloud.

"Of course not," said Glossy Megilp. "Twice a day I have to do myself up somehow, and why shouldn't it be as well as I can? Other things come in their turn, and I do them."

"But, you see, the friz and the fix has to be, anyhow, whether or no. Everything isn't done, whether or no. I guess it's the 'first place,' that's the matter."

"I think you have a very theoretical mind, Des, and a slightly obscure style. You can't be satisfied till everything is all mapped out, and organized, and justified, and you get into horrible snarls trying to do it. If I were you, I would take things a little more as they come."

"I can't," said Desire. "They come hind side before and upside down."

"Well, if everybody is upside down, there's a view of it that makes it all right side up, isn't there? It seems to be an established fact that we must dress and undress, and that the first duty of the day is to get up and put on our clothes. We aren't ready for much until we do. And one person's dressing may require one thing, and another's another. Some people have a cork leg to put on, and some people have false teeth; and they wouldn't any of them come hobbling or mumbling out without them, unless there was a fire or an earthquake, I suppose."

Glossy Megilp's arguments and a.n.a.logies perplexed Desire, always.

They sometimes silenced her; but they did not always answer her. She went back to what they had been discussing before.

"To 'lay down the shubbel and the hoe,'--here's your poker, under the table-flounce, Glossy,--and to 'take up the fiddle and the bow,'

again,--I think it's real nice and beautiful for Hazel--"

"To 'go where the good darkies go'?"

"Yes. It's the _good_ of her that's got her in. And I believe you and Florence both would give your best boots to be there too, if it _is_ behind. Behind the fixings and the fashions is where people _live_; 'dere's vat I za-ay!'" she ended, quoting herself and Rip Van Winkle.

"Maybe," said Florence, carelessly; "but I'd as lief be _in_ the fashion, after all. And that's where Hazel Ripwinkley never will get, with all her taking little novelties."

Meanwhile, Hazel Ripwinkley was deep in the delights of a great portfolio of rare engravings; prints of glorious frescoes in old churches, and designs of splendid architecture; and Mrs. Geoffrey, seeing her real pleasure, was sitting beside her, turning over the large sheets, and explaining them; telling her, as she gazed into the wonderful faces of the Saints and the Evangelists in Correggio's frescoes of the church of San Giovanni at Parma, how the whole dome was one radiant vision of heavenly glory, with clouds and angel faces, and adoring apostles, and Christ the Lord high over all; and that these were but the filling in between the springing curves of the magnificent arches; describing to her the Abbess's room in San Paolo, with its strange, beautiful heathen picture over the mantel, of Diana mounting her stag-drawn car, and its circular walls painted with trellis-work and medallioned with windows, where the heads of little laughing children, and graceful, gentle animals peeped in from among vines and flowers.

Mrs. Geoffrey did not wonder that Hazel lingered with delight over these or over the groups by Raphael in the Sistine Chapel,--the quiet pendentives, where the waiting of the world for its salvation was typified in the dream-like, reclining forms upon the still, desert sand; or the wonderful scenes from the "Creation,"--the majestic "Let there be Light!" and the Breathing of the breath of life into Man. She watched the surprise and awe with which the child beheld for the first time the daring of inspiration in the tremendous embodiment of the Almighty, and waited while she could hardly take her eyes away. But when, afterward, they turned to a portfolio of Architecture, and she found her eager to examine spires and arches and capitals, rich reliefs and stately facades and sculptured gates, and exclaiming with pleasure at the colored drawings of Florentine ornamentation, she wondered, and questioned her,--

"Have you ever seen such things before? Do you draw? I should hardly think you would care so much, at your age."

"I like the prettiness," said Hazel, simply, "and the grandness; but I don't suppose I should care so much if it wasn't for Dorris and Mr. Kincaid. Mr. Kincaid draws buildings; he's an architect; only he hasn't architected much yet, because the people that build things don't know him. Dorris was so glad to give him a Christmas present of 'Daguerreotypes de Paris,' with the churches and arches and bridges and things; she got it at a sale; I wonder what they would say to all these beauties!"

Then Mrs. Geoffrey found what still more greatly enchanted her, a volume of engravings, of English Home Architecture; interiors of old Halls, magnificent staircases, lofty libraries and galleries dim with s.p.a.ce; exteriors, gabled, turreted and towered; long, rambling piles of manor houses, with mixed styles of many centuries.

"They look as if they were brimfull of stories!" Hazel cried. "O, if I could only carry it home to show to the Kincaids!"

"You may," said Mrs. Geoffrey, as simply, in her turn, as if she were lending a copy of "Robinson Crusoe;' never letting the child guess by a breath of hesitation the value of what she had asked.

"And tell me more about these Kincaids. They are friends of yours?"

"Yes; we've known them all winter. They live right opposite, and sit in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the floor; and then she comes over into her parlor, she says, and sits by the window. It's a kind of a play all the time."

"And Mr. Kincaid?"

"Dorris says he might have been rich by this time, if he had gone into his Uncle James's office in New York. Mr. James Kincaid is a broker, and buys gold. But Kenneth says gold stands for work, and if he ever has any he'll buy it with work. He wants to do some real thing. Don't you think that's nice of him?"

"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Geoffrey. "And Dorris is that bright girl who wanted thirteen things, and rhymed them into 'Crambo?' Mr.

Geoffrey told me."

"Yes, ma'am; Dorris can do almost anything."

"I should like to see Dorris, sometime. Will you bring her here, Hazel?"

Hazel's little witch-rod felt the almost impa.s.sible something in the way.

"I don't know as she would be _brought_," she said.