That evening, under some pretense of clean towels, Luclarion came up into Desire's room.

She was sitting alone, by the window, in the dark.

Luclarion fussed round a little; wiped the marble slab and the basin; set things straight; came over and asked Desire if she should not put up the window-bars, and light the gas.

"No," said Desire. "I like this best."

So did Luclarion. She had only said it to make time.

"Desire," she said,--she never put the "Miss" on, she had been too familiar all her life with those she was familiar with at all,--"the fact is I've got something to say, and I came up to say it."

She drew near--came close,--and laid her great, honest, faithful hand on the back of Desire Ledwith's chair, put the other behind her own waist, and leaned over her.

"You see, I'm a woman, Desire, and I know. You needn't mind me, I'm an old maid; that's the way I do know. Married folks, even mothers, half the time forget. But old maids never forget. I've had my stumps, and I can see that you've got yourn. But you'd ought to understand; and there's n.o.body, from one mistake and another, that's going to tell you. It's awful hard; it will be a trouble to you at first,"--and Luclarion's strong voice trembled tenderly with the sympathy that her old maid heart had in it, after, and because of, all those years,--"but Kenneth Kincaid"--

"_What_!" cried Desire, starting to her feet, with a sudden indignation.

"Is going to be married to Rosamond Holabird," said Luclarion, very gently. "There! you ought to know, and I have told you."

"What makes you suppose that that would be a trouble to me?" blazed Desire. "How do you dare"--

"I didn't dare; but I had to!" sobbed Luclarion, putting her arms right round her.

And then Desire--as she would have done at any rate, for that blaze was the mere flash of her own shame and pain--broke down with a moan.

"All at once! All at once!" she said piteously, and hid her face in Luclarion's bosom.

And Luclarion folded her close; hugged her, the good woman, in her love that was sisterly and motherly and all, because it was the love of an old maid, who had endured, for a young maid upon whom the endurance was just laid,--and said, with the pity of heaven in the words,--

"Yes. All at once. But the dear Lord stands by. Take hold of His hand,--and bear with all your might!"

XIX.

INSIDE.

"Do you think, Luclarion," said Desire, feebly, as Luclarion came to take away her bowl of chicken broth,--"that it is my _duty_ to go with mamma?"

"I don't know," said Luclarion, standing with the little waiter in her right hand, her elbow poised upon her hip,--"I've thought of that, and I _don't_ know. There's most generally a stump, you see, one way or another, and that settles it, but here there's one both ways. I've kinder lost my road: come to two blazes, and can't tell which. Only, it ain't my road, after all. It lays between the Lord and you, and I suppose He means it shall. Don't you worry; there'll be some sort of a sign, inside or out. That's His business, you've just got to keep still, and get well."

Desire had asked her mother, before this, if she would care very much,--no, she did not mean that,--if she would be disappointed, or disapprove, that she should stay behind.

"Stay behind? Not go to Europe? Why, where _could_ you stay? What would you do?"

"There would be things to do, and places to stay," Desire had answered, constrainedly. "I could do like Dorris."

"Teach music!"

"No. I don't know music. But I might teach something I do know. Or I could--rip," she said, with an odd smile, remembering something she had said one day so long ago; the day the news came up to Z---- from Uncle Oldways. "And I might make out to put together for other people, and for a real business. I never cared to do it just for myself."

"It is perfectly absurd," said Mrs Ledwith. "You couldn't be left to take care of yourself. And if you could, how it would look! No; of course you must go with us."

"But do you _care_?"

"Why, if there were any proper way, and if you really hate so to go,--but there isn't," said Mrs. Ledwith, not very grammatically or connectedly.

"She _doesn't_ care," said Desire to herself, after her mother had left her, turning her face to the pillow, upon which two tears ran slowly down. "And that is my fault, too, I suppose. I have never been _anything_!"

Lying there, she made up her mind to one thing. She would get Uncle t.i.tus to come, and she would talk to him.

"He won't encourage me in any notions," she said to herself. "And I mean now, if I can find it out, to do the thing G.o.d means; and then I suppose,--I _believe_,--the snarl will begin to unwind."

Meanwhile, Luclarion, when she had set a nice little bowl of tea-m.u.f.fins to rise, and had brought up a fresh pitcher of ice-water into Desire's room, put on her bonnet and went over to Aspen Street for an hour.

Down in the kitchen, at Mrs. Ripwinkley's, they were having a nice time.

Their girl had gone. Since Luclarion left, they had fallen into that Gulf-stream which nowadays runs through everybody's kitchen. Girls came, and saw, and conquered in their fashion; they muddled up, and went away.

The nice times were in the intervals when they _had_ gone away.

Mrs. Ripwinkley did not complain; it was only her end of the "stump;" why should she expect to have a Luclarion Grapp to serve her all her life?

This last girl had gone as soon as she found out that Sulie Praile was "no relation, and didn't anyways belong there, but had been took in." She "didn't go for to come to work in an _Insecution_. She had always been used to first-cla.s.s private families."

Girls will not stand any added numbers, voluntarily a.s.sumed, or even involuntarily befalling; they will a.s.sist in taking up no new responsibilities; to allow things to remain as they are, and cannot help being, is the depth of their condescension,--the extent of what they will put up with. There must be a family of some sort, of course, or there would not be a "place;" that is what the family is made for; but it must be established, no more to fluctuate; that is, you may go away, some of you, if you like, or you may die; but n.o.body must come home that has been away, and n.o.body must be born.

As to anybody being "took in!" Why, the girl defined it; it was not being a family, but an _Insecution_.

So the three--Diana, and Hazel, and Sulie--were down in the kitchen; Mrs. Ripwinkley was busy in the dining-room close by; there was a berry-cake to be mixed up for an early tea. Diana was picking over the berries, Hazel was chopping the b.u.t.ter into the flour, and Sulie on a low cushioned seat in a corner--there was one kept ready for her in every room in the house, and Hazel and Diana carried her about in an "arm-chair," made of their own clasped hands and wrists, wherever they all wanted to go,--Sulie was beating eggs.

Sulie did that so patiently; you see she had no temptation to jump up and run off to anything else. The eggs turned, under her fingers, into thick, creamy, golden froth, fine to the last possible divisibility of the little air-bubbles.

They could not do without Sulie now. They had had her for "all winter;" but in that winter she had grown into their home.

"Why," said Hazel to her mother, when they had the few words about it that ended in there being no more words at all,--"that's the way children are _born_ into houses, isn't it? They just come; and they're new and strange at first, and seem so queer. And then after a while you can't think how the places were, and they not in them.

Sulie belongs, mother!"

So Sulie beat eggs, and darned stockings, and painted her lovely little flower-panels and racks and easels, and did everything that could be done, sitting still in her round chair, or in the cushioned corners made for her; and was always in the kitchen, above all, when any pretty little cookery was going forward.

Vash ran in and out from the garden, and brought balsamine blossoms, from which she pulled the little fairy slippers, and tried to match them in pairs; and she picked off the "used-up and puckered-up"

morning glories, which she blew into at the tube-end, and "snapped"

on the back of her little brown hand.

Wasn't that being good for anything, while berry-cake was making?