“I wish you would,” said Maggie.
Sylvia in those days was an ardent worker in Old Zion Sunday School and had promised to help in a campaign for more students. She told Maggie about it within the next two or three days.
“My mother is going to entertain the new folks whom I get to join. Will you join?”
Maggie would and so went to Sylvia’s home as her mother’s guest.
She never forgot that home with its quiet dignity and atmosphere of prosperity. The Marshall children were a revelation to her. She had not known of colored people like these.
“At last I’m getting to know decent people,” she told her mother.
She had a passion for respectability and decency quite apart from what they connoted of comparative ease and comfort, though she coveted these latter, too, and meant some day to have them.
“Two months ago,” she thought, “I was still in that horrible house on Thirty-fifth Street, and I got away. If that could happen, anything could happen.” She lay in her bed at nights in the little yellow room and saw visions.
IX
She played her cards with an odd mixture of deliberation and spontaneity.
“Maggie adores you, Sylvia,” said Joanna.
“I think she does,” Sylvia replied modestly. “I don’t know why, I’m sure. She certainly is nice to me.”
Maggie’s obvious admiration and Sylvia’s naive acceptance made the way easy. It is hard not to be nice to someone who shows plainly that you are her ideal, your company her supreme satisfaction. Maggie wore her hair like Sylvia’s, she copied when she could her manner of dressing, she spent half her time at the Marshall house.
She saw the value of absolute honesty. No need to pose when telling the exact truth brought what one wanted without the strain of living up to a false position. The Marshalls soon knew of Maggie’s poverty, of the quick wit and determination which had brought them from that “dump-heap”—Maggie’s word—to the respectable and comfortable if still cheap boardinghouse. Sylvia used to talk to her mother about it. Mrs. Marshall suggested that she hand over to Maggie one or two of her perfectly good but discarded dresses.
But Sylvia objected with a very real delicacy. “She goes to the same school I go to and to Sunday-School. I wouldn’t want the other children to see her in my things, she’d feel so badly.”
Her mother saw the justice of that. “I suppose I have one or two things. There’s that old brown Henrietta of mine and the silk poplin. How’ll she get them made over though, Sylvia? Now don’t expect me to help.”
“Oh, mamma, you darling! You really are a brick! That poplin is old rose, isn’t it? She ought to look lovely in it. I can fix them. You know how I love to fix things over and Maggie knows how to sew on the machine. If she stayed here three or four days, the rest of this week, we could finish them.”
Mrs. Marshall agreed, Maggie’s mother was consulted, Maggie came in an ecstasy. Her first sojourn away from home! And what a sojourn! Naturally neat though she was, she learned of toilet mysteries, of rites of which she had never dreamed. Nightly hair-brushings and the discovery that of course each one had her own brush and comb! Frequent washings of both, talcum powders! Joanna the ascetic used scentless ones, but Sylvia’s were highly fragrant. These Maggie preferred. A bath every night.
“If you don’t mind,” said Sylvia, “I’ll take mine first and then you can stay in as long as you like. I hope that pig Joanna hasn’t used up all the hot water!”
Delicacies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Dinner at six instead of the middle of the day! Mrs. Marshall complained of a headache Saturday morning and Joanna took her breakfast up to her on a silver tray. Mr. Marshall kept box on box of cigars in his den. Sandy and Philip wore superlatively blackened shoes.
Maggie looked, listened, stored in her memory. The dresses were a success. The rose poplin, being the prettier, was finished first; Sylvia had longed so to get her hands on it. Maggie put it on Saturday morning and stood in front of the cheval mirror in Mrs. Marshall’s room admiring her own and Sylvia’s handiwork, and herself with it.
“It’s too pretty to wear in the house. Oh, don’t let’s have to wait till tomorrow. Mamma, couldn’t the boys take us to the matinée? Maggie, have you seen Peter Pan?”
Maggie, it transpired, had seen nothing, had never been inside a theater.
“What fun!” Sylvia’s native delicacy hit on the right expression. “Fancy going to your first matinée. Can you spare us, Mother dear?”
The party could be arranged. Philip and Alexander expressed their willingness. Joanna did not care to go, to Maggie’s astonishment, which increased when she saw how wonderful the theater was. But there were other things. The girl never forgot the thrill that came over her as Philip took her arm and led her over dangerous crossings, arranged her seat and program for her, took off her coat. He held it during the performance and wrinkled it shamelessly. Sylvia scolded him.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Phil.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maggie interposed happily. She was beginning to have her good time like other people. Oh, God bless John Howe!
The acquaintanceship progressed. All through the high school the two were nearly inseparable. It is true, Maggie sought Sylvia more than Sylvia sought her, but on the other hand Maggie’s presence was taken as a matter of course by the Marshalls and their friends. Maggie went to parties with Sylvia, the two escorted by Brian Spencer and Philip. Often she slept at her house after the parties
