The Collected Works of Susan Coolidge: 7 Novels, 35+ Short Stories, Essays & Poems (Illustrated). Susan CoolidgeЧитать онлайн книгу.
as far as I can judge in three minutes and a quarter.”
“My dear, it ought not to take anybody of ordinary discernment a minute and a quarter to perceive that he is simply the dearest fellow that ever lived,” said Rose. “I discovered it three seconds after I first beheld him, and was desperately in love with him before he had fairly finished his first bow after introduction.”
“And was he equally prompt?” asked Katy.
“He says so,” replied Rose, with a pretty blush. “But then, you know, he could hardly say less after such a frank confession on my part. It is no more than decent of him to make believe, even if it is not true. Now, Katy, look at Boston, and see if you don’t love it!”
The cab had now turned into Boylston Street; and on the right hand lay the Common, green as summer after the autumn rains, with the elm arches leafy still. Long, slant beams of afternoon sun were filtering through the boughs and falling across the turf and the paths, where people were walking and sitting, and children and babies playing together. It was a delightful scene; and Katy received an impression of space and cheer and air and freshness, which ever after was associated with her recollection of Boston.
Rose was quite satisfied with her raptures as they drove through Charles Street, between the Common and the Public Garden, all ablaze with autumn flowers, and down the length of Beacon Street with the blue bay shining between the handsome houses on the water side. Every vestibule and bay-window was gay with potted plants and flower-boxes; and a concourse of happy-looking people, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, was surging to and fro like an equal, prosperous tide, while the sunlight glorified all.
“‘Boston shows a soft Venetian side,’” quoted Katy, after a while. “I know now what Mr. Lowell meant when he wrote that. I don’t believe there is a more beautiful place in the world.”
“Why, of course there isn’t,” retorted Rose, who was a most devoted little Bostonian, in spite of the fact that she had lived in Washington nearly all her life. “I’ve not seen much beside, to be sure, but that is no matter; I know it is true. It is the dream of my life to come into the city to live. I don’t care what part I live in,—West End, South End, North End; it’s all one to me, so long as it is Boston!”
“But don’t you like Longwood?” asked Katy, looking out admiringly at the pretty places set amid vines and shrubberies, which they were now passing. “It looks so very pretty and pleasant.”
“Yes, it’s well enough for any one who has a taste for natural beauties,” replied Rose. “I haven’t; I never had. There is nothing I hate so much as Nature! I’m a born cockney. I’d rather live in one room over Jordan and Marsh’s, and see the world wag past, than be the owner of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don’t care where it may be situated.”
The cab now turned in at a gate and followed a curving drive bordered with trees to a pretty stone house with a porch embowered with Virginia creepers, before which it stopped.
“Here we are!” cried Rose, springing out. “Now, Katy, you mustn’t even take time to sit down before I show you the dearest baby that ever was sent to this sinful earth. Here, let me take your bag; come straight upstairs, and I will exhibit her to you.”
They ran up accordingly, and Rose took Katy into a large sunny nursery, where, tied with pink ribbon into a little basket-chair and watched over by a pretty young nurse, sat a dear, fat, fair baby, so exactly like Rose in miniature that no one could possibly have mistaken the relationship. The baby began to laugh and coo as soon as it caught sight of its gay little mother, and exhibited just such another dimple as hers, in the middle of a pink cheek. Katy was enchanted.
“Oh, you darling!” she said. “Would she come to me, do you think, Rose?”
“Why, of course she shall,” replied Rose, picking up the baby as if she had been a pillow, and stuffing her into Katy’s arms head first. “Now, just look at her, and tell me if ever you saw anything so enchanting in the whole course of your life before? Isn’t she big? Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she good? Just see her little hands and her hair! She never cries except when it is clearly her duty to cry. See her turn her head to look at me! Oh, you angel!” And seizing the long-suffering baby, she smothered it with kisses. “I never, never, never did see anything so sweet. Smell her, Katy! Doesn’t she smell like heaven?”
Little Rose was indeed a delicious baby, all dimples and good-humor and violet-powder, with a skin as soft as a lily’s leaf, and a happy capacity for allowing herself to be petted and cuddled without remonstrance. Katy wanted to hold her all the time; but this Rose would by no means permit; in fact, I may as well say at once that the two girls spent a great part of their time during the visit in fighting for the possession of the baby, who looked on at the struggle, and smiled on the victor, whichever it happened to be, with all the philosophic composure of Helen of Troy. She was so soft and sunny and equable, that it was no more trouble to care for and amuse her than if she had been a bird or a kitten; and, as Rose remarked, it was “ten times better fun.”
“I was never allowed as much doll as I wanted in my infancy,” she said. “I suppose I tore them to pieces too soon; and they couldn’t give me tin ones to play with, as they did wash-bowls when I broke the china ones.”
“Were you such a very bad child?” asked Katy.
“Oh, utterly depraved, I believe. You wouldn’t think so now, would you? I recollect some dreadful occasions at school. Once I had my head pinned up in my apron because I would make faces at the other scholars, and they laughed; but I promptly bit a bay-window through the apron, and ran my tongue out of it till they laughed worse than ever. The teacher used to send me home with notes fastened to my pinafore with things like this written in them: ‘Little Frisk has been more troublesome than usual to-day. She has pinched all the younger children, and bent the bonnets of all the older ones. We hope to see an amendment soon, or we do not know what we shall do.’”
“Why did they call you Little Frisk?” inquired Katy, after she had recovered from the laugh which Rose’s reminiscences called forth.
“It was a term of endearment, I suppose; but somehow my family never seemed to enjoy it as they ought. I cannot understand,” she went on reflectively, “why I had not sense enough to suppress those awful little notes. It would have been so easy to lose them on the way home, but somehow it never occurred to me. Little Rose will be wiser than that; won’t you, my angel? She will tear up the horrid notes—mammy will show her how!”
All the time that Katy was washing her face and brushing the dust of the railway from her dress, Rose sat by with the little Rose in her lap, entertaining her thus. When she was ready, the droll little mamma tucked her baby under her arm and led the way downstairs to a large square parlor with a bay-window, through which the westering sun was shining. It was a pretty room, and had a flavor about it “just like Rose,” Katy declared. No one else would have hung the pictures or looped back the curtains in exactly that way, or have hit upon the happy device of filling the grate with a great bunch of marigolds, pale brown, golden, and orange, to simulate the fire, which would have been quite too warm on so mild an evening. Morris papers and chintzes and “artistic” shades of color were in their infancy at that date; but Rose’s taste was in advance of her time, and with a foreshadowing of the coming “reaction,” she had chosen a “greenery, yallery” paper for her walls, against which hung various articles which looked a great deal queerer then than they would to-day. There was a mandolin, picked up at some Eastern sale, a warming-pan in shining brass from her mother’s attic, two old samplers worked in faded silks, and a quantity of gayly tinted Japanese fans and embroideries. She had also begged from an old aunt at Beverly Farms a couple of droll little armchairs in white painted wood, with covers of antique needle-work. One had “Chit” embroidered on the middle of its cushion; the other, “Chat.” These stood suggestively at the corners of the hearth.
“Now, Katy,” said Rose, seating herself in “Chit,” “pull up ‘Chat’ and let us begin.”
So they did begin, and went on,