“Fannie and Prentice and their two little girls are home for a visit, May,” said Mrs. Leaf. “Fannie’s so anxious to see you. She told me to tell you you must be sure to come for lawn tennis, tomorrow morning, all three of you.”
“We couldn’t, thank you, Mrs. Leaf. Victor gets home from Harvard this evening, and we simply couldn’t leave him.”
“But, of course he must come too! Little Victor Campion a grownup Harvard gentleman—think of it! How time flies! You know you all seem children to me, and yet here’s Fannie been married four years—by the way, is she a month older than you, or a month younger? We were trying to remember. Older! That’s what I told them. And Robert married a year and a half, and both the children thinking they know more about bringing up babies than I do! No soothing syrup, if you please! And their stuck-up nurse-girls! But I must say the babies are lovely—remind me to show you a new photograph of Isabel holding little Robbie—he certainly looks like his daddy. Now you come tomorrow, or Fannie will feel dreadfully. I told her and Lucy Hawthorn they were bad girls not to stay for the sewing this afternoon, but they all went over to the Sandersons to play at lawn tennis—they’re nuts on it, as Robert says. Carpus! Now put the tray here—here on the table, and take the teapot out—excuse me, May—and tell Lissa to fill it up again. Carpus! Tell Lissa not so strong—not so strong—no, don’t take the tray, just the teapot—Mercy!”
“I’m afraid my little Goosey-Lucy isn’t much of a loss as far as the sewing goes,” said Mrs. Hawthorn, throwing a veil of tact over her friend’s fluster. “She belongs to a sewing circle in New York, but I don’t believe the girls do much but gossip and drink chocolate. I notice most of the sewing’s brought home for my poor Elise to do.”
“Elise is Mrs. Hawthorn’s French maid,” Mrs. Leaf explained. That made up for Carpus acting as if he’d never seen a teapot in his life before—the foolish!
“Mrs. Hawthorn was lovely, wasn’t she?” asked Lily as the sisters walked home. “Did you see her handkerchief? It was all lace except for a piece of cambric about the size of a postage stamp, and she smelled so sweet, like that soap from Paris Cousin Lizzie gave you one Christmas, sort of heliotropy.”
May’s face flushed darkly, and her lip began to tremble.
“I couldn’t bear her! You could see every minute she was thinking, ‘I’m being charming! I’m being perfectly charming to all these country bumpkins!’ Yes, and that’s what we are—country bumpkins, and I’m sick of it! Aren’t we ever going to do anything all our lives but sit at home and scrimp, scrimp, scrimp, so that Victor can have nice clothes, Victor can get away, Victor can go to college? We’re human, too, aren’t we?”
“Why, May—!”
“Yes, ‘why, May!’ I’m sick and tired of wearing a steamed velvet iron-holder trimmed with an old duck wing Maggie’s cured on the wagon-shed wall, because I can’t afford a hat, and so Victor can. Who’d look at me, who’d look at any of us in these old made-overs? Who is there to look, anyway? There isn’t a man here who isn’t married or about a hundred—but Victor must have everything, so we’ll just sit at home and twiddle our thumbs and get older and older and older, and fifty years from now they’ll still be calling us the Campion girls—”
She began to laugh. “Did you hear Mrs. Leaf bragging to me about Fannie and Robert and their children? Why should I be expected to be interested in Robert Leaf’s baby, I should like to know? He and Isabel can have a million babies for all I care—it certainly isn’t of the slightest importance to me—”
“Why, May!”
“Why, Lily! I wish you could see your face!” May laughed, harder, harder, until she was almost sobbing. And then suddenly the jangle of laughter stopped, and she looked faint and exhausted, opening her hand and letting the hot crushed daisies she had snatched off by their heads fall to the ground.
They had scraped to send Victor to Harvard. May complained, but she made their clothes just the same, turning and making over and trimming with bits of this and that from the piece bag in the entry closet, until they looked pretty enough really to have come from the grand places whose labels she ripped out of Mamma’s old gowns and sewed in. And she trimmed their hats, too, taking one by one the stuffed birds, the oriole, the bluejay, the rose-breasted grosbeak, from their branches under the glass bell on top of Papa’s secretary.
Maggie did the cooking. Martha had married her young darkie, and a life he was leading her! And Lily helped save by giving up her music lessons with Miss Martin, and working alone, with a novel propped open on the music rack while she practiced her scales, to relieve the monotony.
Maggie had set her heart on Victor’s going to Harvard because Papa had gone there. And Victor wanted to go, too, while the going was still far away, while the mountains were distant waves of mist-blue, instead of steep grey rocks and slipping stones. At home, planning to go, he had been all of Harvard; but when he got to Harvard he was nothing.
Those first homesick days! He would have run home to The Maples if he could, as he had run on his first day of school.
He sat in his small room looking as lost as if he were alone on a raft in the middle of the sea. From his window he saw a thin grey cat slowly stalk a sparrow; then a man came by calling bananas. The sparrow flew away, the cat poured itself through
