Miss Theodosias Heartstrings | Page 4

claimed was a sturdy vehicle of speech. "You will set down your teacup hard," wrote on Miss Theodosia,--"I know you are drinking tea!--when I tell you the little story of the Whitewashing of Theodosia Baxter. But shall I tell it? Why expose Theodosia Baxter's weaknesses when hitherto she has posed as strong? Soberly, Cornelia, I am as much surprised at myself as you will be (oh, I shall tell it!). Do you remember your Mother Goose? The little astonished old lady who took a nap beside the road and woke to find her petticoats cut off at her knees? 'Oh, lawk-a-daisy me, can this be I!' cried she. I'm not sure those were just her words, but they will do. Oh, lawk-a-daisy me, can this be Theodosia Baxter! The Astonished Little Old Lady, if I remember my Mother Goose, resorted to the simple expedient of going home and letting her little dog decide if she were she. But I have no little dog.
"They were so earnest to whitewash me, Cornelia! The whole scheme was such a plucky little one and Baxters, from the dawn of creation, have admired pluck. The lively, chatterbox-one was 'Evangeline' and the quiet one who should have been an Evangeline was what the other one ought to have been,--a 'Stefana,' suggestive of flashing, dark eyes under a lace mantilla, with ways to match the eyes. So does fate play her little jokes. The baby--but what do I know of babies or you know of babies? He had six toes and I might have seen them for nothing; so do we miss our opportunities. He was named for his grandfather just in time, but the name, my dear, the name! Elihu. Are you listening? Elihu! But they offered him the assuaging 'sop' of 'Launcelot' for a middle name, and what could a baby do? Babies are the little scapegoats of mistaken loyalties."
Miss Theodosia was having a good time. Her sober mood had passed. She wrote on enjoyingly, describing the whole little episode to Cornelia Dunlap. The freshening of it in her memory was pleasant. Again she felt the tug of those eager little pleadings. She kept remembering other things about little Elihu Launcelot besides his name and his toes. She remembered how gravely he had looked at her, how tiny and soft his hands were.
"That little box of a house next to mine, Cornelia,--I told you about it. Well, it's as full now as it has been empty, and a little fuller. Dear knows how many it holds! But it's sociable seeing the smoke come out of the chimney; it's friendly."
She had not thought of it as sociable and friendly before. The thought seemed just to have come to her. She was quite cheerful-minded when she finished her letter to Cornelia Dunlap and neatly folded it. If she had but known, she was sorry for Cornelia who was not next door to a friendly little box.
She made tea and sipped it, made golden toast and opened a foreign-looking box of some sort of jelly. While she ate slowly, she slowly made plans. No, she would not have a stay-all-the-time maid--yes, she would move her things into the room facing the next-door house. Until she got tired of watching the sociable thread of smoke, anyway.
It had not occurred yet to Theodosia Baxter that she had not said a word to Cornelia Dunlap about going on their travels again. When it did occur, she suddenly laughed out aloud, but softly.
"I forgot what I began that letter for! I never mentioned going away again! And now--I'm glad. Who wants to go off? 'East, west, hame's best.' Even a hame next door to a little dry-goods box."
Of course there was the promise to let those funny kiddies whitewash her--
"It's a Baxter promise; don't try to get out of it, Theodosia Baxter," she said.
The next noon she saw her dresses dangling from the neighboring clothesline. They were not successfully dangled; Miss Theodosia liked to see them hung with symmetry, all alike in a seemly row. The shirtwaists dangled also in unseemly attitudes. One hung by a single sleeve. But that was not all--a certain faint suggestion of something worse than lack of symmetry persisted in Miss Theodosia's mind. They had been especially travel-stained, soiled; they had still an air of soil and travel-stain. They didn't look clean!
Miss Theodosia groaned. "It may be blueing streaks," she said, but there was little comfort in blueing streaks. She got her opera glasses and peered through them at her beloved dresses. Brought up at close range, they were certainly blue-streaked, and there was plain lack of the snowy whiteness her stern washing-creed demanded.
At intervals, small figures issued from the house and circled about the clotheslines, inspecting their contents critically. Miss Theodosia saw one of them--it was