"I know it is the shop," said Madelaine, floating across the room to an ottoman beside Mrs. Millard. Madelaine, too, had an instinct for the effective, and nothing could have made a more charming picture.

"Grandpa and Mr. Goodman were at it a few minutes ago. Mr Goodman talks about an injunction."

"We began with the shop, but we seem to have switched off on to education," said Mrs. Leigh. "One never heard such talk when I was young. Then we had plenty of servants, and there was always some man to attend to business. After the war I asked our old Malinda one day how she liked freedom. 'Well, Miss Sally,' she said, 'I likes it, and I don't like it. I tell you what, Miss Sally, freedom's monstrous industrious.' That is what I think about these times,--'they's monstrous industrious.' Goodness, I have gone and told a story!"

"I shall have to take you home before you transgress again," said her niece, rising.

"Don't go. We haven't decided what we must do," urged Miss Virginia.

"What do you think, Mrs. Millard?" asked Madelaine, with an upward glance, and flattering emphasis.

Mrs. Millard caressed the hand that lay on her lap as she replied, "My own feeling is that we should refuse our patronage--not that they are likely to have anything we'd care to buy--and use our influence against it."

"Well, I for one shan't make any promises; if I need a spool of thread and can save a walk, I shall go over there to get it," Miss Sarah announced positively.

"You might add that your patronage is not likely of itself to save the shop from bankruptcy," put in her nephew.

Everybody seemed to be going. Charlotte tucked her history under her arm and ran upstairs. As she went to the window to draw the curtain a bright light shone from the shop across the street.

"I wonder if you'll be sorry you came here?" said Charlotte to herself.

CHAPTER SEVENTH

A SPOOL OF TWIST

The shop windows on the opening day proved most alluring to Miss Virginia. There were two,--one overlooking the square of lawn on the Terrace, the other, Pleasant Street. Between them, placed across the corner, was the door.

The Terrace window was full of plants, while on the Pleasant Street side there was a tempting display of color. Miss Virginia hunted up her distance gla.s.ses, which she seldom used, in order the better to view it; but she failed to make out anything in particular. Her ardor might have suggested an archaeologist over a cuneiform inscription, as she tried to decide whether a certain patch of blue and white was a pillow or a table-cover.

Charlotte openly stopped to view the window on her way home from school, and Miss Virginia, observing it, privately questioned her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECURELY ENTRENCHED BEHIND THE LACE CURTAIN SHE LEVELLED HER GLa.s.s]

"You ought to go over and look in, Aunt Virginia," she said. "There are the prettiest baskets you ever saw."

Miss Virginia adored baskets.

"And there is the dearest sofa pillow."

She had decided on a pillow for Caroline's birthday.

"And, Aunt Virginia, there are the cunningest little collars with cuffs to match," Charlotte continued with mischievous eyes.

Miss Virginia grew impatient. It was out of all reason that such desirable things should be brought almost to her door and yet be beyond her reach.

"It wouldn't be giving them much encouragement just to look in the window," observed Charlotte. "I'll tell you," she cried the next minute, "opera gla.s.ses!"

"My _dear_, look at my neighbors through an opera gla.s.s?"

"But they _want_ to be looked at," insisted Charlotte, with unanswerable logic.

Miss Virginia allowed herself to be persuaded, and, securely entrenched behind the lace curtain, she levelled her gla.s.s. As is ever the case with one who dallies with temptation, the result was an increased desire to have that pillow in her hands.

Standing absorbed in contemplation, she suddenly, without intending it, turned her gaze upon one of the upper windows; and as she did so the muslin draperies parted and a pair of merry eyes belonging to a pretty face looked straight into hers.

"I beg your pardon," cried Miss Virginia, dropping her gla.s.s and sinking into a chair, "I shall be ashamed of this to my dying day,"

she groaned, while Charlotte went off into fits of laughter.

It was some time before she could be brought to realize she had not been seen. "Not that that makes it much better," she added contritely.

"And, Charlotte, don't mention it to your Aunt Caroline. I think my ideas of propriety are as strict as hers, but I do not succeed so well in living up to them. I fear I am, as she says, childish."

"I shall not say anything about it, and I am sure I think you are very nice, Aunt Virginia," answered Charlotte, still laughing.

The suspicion that Charlotte liked her better than she did Caroline was a secret pleasure to Miss Virginia, and she flushed prettily as she said, "Thank you, dear; I am far from what I should be."

Charlotte went to take her music lesson; Mrs. Millard was attending a club meeting; the house was very quiet as Miss Virginia sat down to her embroidery. While she worked, the face so vividly imprinted on her memory in that moment's view continued to rise before her. She began to feel something like sympathy for its owner. She had not supposed it would be such an attractive shop. What possible harm could there be in going over just to look? She might even go in and explain to the proprietor that she had made a mistake in coming into the neighborhood. It would be a kindness. She could use a spool of b.u.t.tonhole twist as an excuse. She really needed it.

Then she saw the foolishness of all this and tried to think of something else. She worked another scallop, and concluded to go for a walk.

When she stepped out of the gate, she turned her back upon the shop and walked in the opposite direction, but a quarter of an hour later she might have been seen approaching it by way of Pleasant Street.

It was a beautiful October day; there was a suggestion of autumn in the maples, but the air was soft as spring. As she stood before the door her heart beat guiltily; her own home across the way wore an oddly unfamiliar look.

Being a shop one was, of course, expected to open the door and walk in. Miss Virginia did so, and for a bewildered moment felt she had made a mistake, for there was nothing in the room she entered that seemed to bear any relation to a shop.

In the window, where the ferns and palms were, three persons sat, two young women and a small boy in socks. One of the three rose and came to meet her. The ident.i.ty of the face with the one she had seen through the opera gla.s.s so recently, added to her confusion.

"Can I show you something?"

Miss Virginia gazed at the speaker despairingly. "I have forgotten what I came for," she stammered.

It might have been an everyday occurrence to have customers who had forgotten what they wanted, for anything the manner of the young woman showed. She smiled indeed, but sympathetically, saying she often forgot things herself; and, pushing forward a willow chair, added, "Won't you sit down and let me show you some of our things?"

Not seeing her way clear to escape, Miss Virginia accepted the chair.

There were other chairs of the same variety, some of them supplied with cushions; around the olive-tinted walls were low cases which might hold books or anything; there was a table with a lamp and magazines upon it, and in the corner fireplace a low fire flickered.

The most businesslike piece of furniture was the long table upon which the young woman was laying out a bewitching a.s.sortment of collars and cuffs of a daintiness that went to the heart. Miss Virginia forgot her embarra.s.sment in her pleasure at the array of pretty things.

The small boy crossed the room, and depositing a gray flannel donkey on the table leaned upon Miss Virginia's chair. He was a pretty child, and she smiled at him as he lifted his serious brown eyes.

"Jack likes to see what you are doing, but you mustn't sell him by mistake, Miss Norah," he said.

"Is this your little boy?" she asked.

"No, James Mandeville is a neighbor and very good friend of ours.

Aren't you, Infinitesimal James?"