Miss Snaith might be full of her fancies, but she couldn’t play the piano.
“Everybody come and sing—what shall it be? ‘Just Kiss Yourself Goodbye’ or ‘The Message of the Violet?’ Come and sing, Mr. Neff, we can’t get along without you.”
“Hem! Hem! I seem to have a frog in my throat.”
“Teddy says he’s goin’ to sing too, so he is!” called Miss Snaith, scrambling up. Oop! There went some gathers! Miss Hopper took off her rings—the one like a little piece of currant jelly, the four diamond chips in a row, and the turquoise forget-me-not, and put them in the swinging candle holder. And soon they were singing:
“ ‘Any rags, any bones, any bottles today,
It’s the same old story in the same old way—’ ”
Mr. Neff was perfectly killing when he sang “Any Ra-a-ags!” working Teddy’s little paw up and down as if he were an opera singer. The ladies were in raptures. Mr. Hopper tapped time to the music with a thick-soled, carefully polished old boot, Mrs. Hopper yawned and applauded, and Mrs. Mittendorf sat smiling sleepily into the fire, too comfortable to move, holding her darling stomach.
XXVII
Summer came, and Miss Snaith and Miss Hopper, in piqué skirts, with chatelaine bags hanging from their straining belts, and lingerie waists with high boned collars, whose bones left cruel red marks on their necks, pretended to gather snowballs, while Mr. Neff took their photographs.
“Mercy, don’t take me, I’d spoil the picture! Really, I take an awful photograph,” Miss Hopper exclaimed, and Miss Snaith said, “I’d break the camera!” And then Miss Hopper, who had been looking at a snowball just above her head with a soulful expression, came to with a start, crying, “Oh, did you take it? Oh, I had no idea you were taking it!” They could hardly wait until Mr. Neff brought home the prints. Gracious, how dark they were! Miss Snaith could have cried, she looked so like a colored woman with a little white marble for a nose. “Oh, that’s very pretty!” Miss Hopper assured her. “I don’t think I’d know it was you, but it’s very pretty. I think they’re splendid, Mr. Neff, especially as my face hardly shows—that’s a great advantage!”
Miss Hopper had a Teddy bear too. Hers had a blue ribbon, and Miss Snaith’s a pink, so they wouldn’t get mixed. “Theodore bears,” Mr. Neff called them in his funny way; and through them, through loving speeches and caresses lavished on them, each tragic virgin called to him, “Help me! Help me, before it is too late!”
They had given up trying to call to that standoffish Mr. Campion, although Miss Snaith’s heart fluttered whenever she saw him—just to pass the door of his empty room gave her a queer little pang, half pain, half pleasure. “He said he was fond of pink,” she thought, hooking herself into her old rose pongee princess dress. “He said he liked womenly women, just after I said I hoped women would never have to vote—I wonder if he meant anything—”
The leaves turned red; the snow fell. And in the spring Mr. Neff left.
“It’s Miss May,” he explained to Mrs. Mittendorf. “I don’t know what’s the matter with her, she just sort of smoulders all the time, and some days she won’t even answer when you speak to her. I wouldn’t mind that, if her highness don’t want to talk to me, all right, she needn’t, I’m satisfied; but it’s the way she cries at night, her room’s next to mine, and I can’t get my sleep—I just can’t stand it.”
“She’s a funny one,” agreed Mrs. Mittendorf, rocking back and forth, her hands crossed over her belt.
“She has bats in her belfry, that’s what’s wrong with her,” said Mr. Neff darkly.
Bats in her belfry! What would Mr. Neff say next! Mrs. Mittendorf swayed backward and forward, shaking with silent laughter. Bats in her belfry!
Summer again, and boiled cherry puddings. “Dr. Mittendorf was always the greatest one for boiled cherry pudding,” said Mrs. Mittendorf, really thinking of her dead husband for the first time in ever so long. “When cherries were in market, I’d only have to say to Doctor, ‘Well, Doctor, what would you like for dinner?’ ‘Boiled cherry pudding!’ ” Her little eyes swam, partly from sentiment, partly because the steaming purple-stained dough was so hot.
The mosquitoes were dreadful. Mrs. Hopper used up bottles of citronella. And it was so hot. The boarders rocked on the river porch, slapping and flapping their palm-leaf fans. Muggy, that’s what it was. The Hoppers decided they needed a change of air—they would try Asbury Park for a while.
But the real reason was that May made them nervous. “I don’t see how you stand it, Ethel,” Miss Hopper said to Miss Snaith. They had grown quite fond of each other since Mr. Neff had gone. “She’s got a look in her eyes that sends the cold chills up my spine.”
Mrs. Mittendorf followed them. “I hate to go in a way,” she told Miss Snaith. “Miss Campion sets a lovely table, and there aren’t many places give you eggs, too, mornings you have scrapple. And I have to have plenty of good wholesome food, I’m stout, but I’m not strong. I haven’t any fault to find with Miss Campion, though she is outspoken, nor Miss Lily either, though she’s rather selfish for all she’s so religious—deceitful, too. For instance, last Sunday I was just going to slip up to my room with the Sunday papers, just to glance through them, and I looked all round the parlor—no papers! And there sat Miss Lily, as innocent as you please, reading ‘The Spirit of Missions.’ So I said, ‘Pardon me, but have you seen the Sunday papers?’ and she sat there looking around and said ‘I don’t see them.’ No, and do you know why she didn’t see them? She was sitting on them! I saw a corner sticking out—I gave her a look! Still,
