Mary-Gusta | Page 7

by bringing the kittens also
to the surrey, but their parent had promptly and consecutively seized
them by the scruff of their necks and laboriously lugged them up to the
haymow again.
Just now, however, there being no kittens, David was slumbering in a

furry heap beside Mary-'Gusta at one end of the carriage seat, and
Rosette, the smallest of the five dolls, and Rose, the largest, were
sitting bolt upright in the corner at the other end. The christening of the
smallest and newest doll was the result of a piece of characteristic
reasoning on its owner's part. She was very fond of the name Rose, the
same being the name of the heroine in "Eight Cousins," which story
Mrs. Bailey, housekeeper before last for Marcellus Hall, had read aloud
to the child. When the new doll came, at Christmas time, Mary-'Gusta
wished that she might christen it Rose also. But there was another and
much beloved Rose already in the family. So Mary-'Gusta reflected and
observed, and she observed that a big roll of tobacco such as her
stepfather smoked was a cigar; while a little one, as smoked by Eben
Keeler, the grocer's delivery clerk, was a cigarette. Therefore, the big
doll being already Rose, the little one became Rosette.
Mary-'Gusta was not playing with Rose and Rosette at the present time.
Neither was she interested in the peaceful slumbers of David. She was
not playing at all, but sitting, with feet crossed beneath her on the seat
and hands clasped about one knee, thinking. And, although she was
thinking of her stepfather who she knew had gone away to a vague
place called Heaven--a place variously described by Mrs. Bailey, the
former housekeeper, and by Mrs. Susan Hobbs, the present one, and by
Mr. Howes, the Sunday school superintendent--she was thinking most
of herself, Mary Augusta Lathrop, who was going to a funeral that very
afternoon and, after that, no one seemed to know exactly where.
It was a beautiful April day and the doors of the carriage house and the
big door of the barn were wide open. Mary-'Gusta could hear the hens
clucking and the voices of people talking. The voices were two: one
was that of Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper, and the other belonged to Mr.
Abner Hallett, the undertaker. Mary-'Gusta did not like Mr. Hallett's
voice; she liked neither it nor its owner's manner; she described both
voice and manner to herself as "too soothy." They gave her the shivers.
Mr. Hallett's tone was subdued at the present time, but a trifle of the
professional "soothiness" was lacking. He and Mrs. Hobbs were
conversing briskly enough and, although Mary-'Gusta could catch only

a word or two at intervals, she was perfectly sure they were talking
about her. She was certain that if she were to appear at that moment in
the door of the barn they would stop talking immediately and look at
her. Everybody whom she had met during the past two days looked at
her in that queer way. It made her feel as if she had something catching,
like the measles, and as if, somehow or other, she was to blame.
She realized dimly that she should feel very, very badly because her
stepfather was dead. Mrs. Hobbs had told her that she should and
seemed to regard her as queerer than ever because she had not cried.
But, according to the housekeeper, Captain Hall was out of his troubles
and had gone where he would be happy for ever and ever. So it seemed
to her strange to be expected to cry on his account. He had not been
happy here in Ostable, or, at least, he had not shown his happiness in
the way other people showed theirs. To her he had been a big, bearded
giant of a man, whom she saw at infrequent intervals during the day
and always at night just before she went to bed. His room, with the
old-fashioned secretary against the wall, and the stuffed gull on the
shelf, and the books in the cupboard, and the polished narwhal horn in
the corner, was to her a sort of holy of holies, a place where she was led
each evening at nine o'clock, at first by Mrs. Bailey and, later, by Mrs.
Hobbs, to shake the hand of the big man who looked at her absently
over his spectacles and said good night in a voice not unkindly but
expressing no particular interest. At other times she was strictly
forbidden to enter that room.
Occasionally, but very rarely, she had eaten Sunday dinner with
Marcellus. She and the housekeeper usually ate together and Mr. Hall's
meals were served in what the child called "the smoke room," meaning
the apartment just described, which was