People of the Whirlpool | Page 6

last fall for over a Sunday to wake father up; for I believe
men sometimes need the society of others of their own age and past, as
much as children need childlife, and Martin stayed a month, and is
promising to return next spring. I wonder if the Sylvia Latham who has
been travelling with Miss Lavinia is any kin of the Lathams who are
building the great colonial home above the Jenks-Smiths. I have never
seen any of the family except Mrs. Latham, a tall, colourless blonde,
who reminds one of a handsome unlit lamp. She seems to be
superintending the work by coming up now and then, and I met her at
the butcher's where she was buying sweetbreads--"a trifle for
luncheon." Accusation No. 1, against the Whirlpoolers: Since their
advent sweetbreads have risen from two pairs for a quarter, and "thank
you kindly for taking them off our hands," to fifty cents to a dollar a
"set." We no longer care for sweetbreads!
* * * * *
I was therefore amused, but no longer surprised, at the exaggerated way
in which the childless Lady of the Bluffs,--her step-daughter having ten
years back made a foolish foreign marriage,--gave me her views upon
the drawbacks of the daughters of her world, when she made me, on her
return from a European trip, a visit upon the twins' first
birthday,--bearing, with her usually reckless generosity, a pair of costly
gold apostle spoons, as she said, "to cut their teeth on." I admired, but
frugally popped them into the applewood treasure chests that father has
had made for the boys from the "mother tree," that was finally laid low
by a tornado the winter of their birth and is now succeeded by a
younger one of Richard's choice.
"My dear woman," she gasped, turning my face toward the light and
dropping into a chair at the same time, "how well you look; not a bit
upset by the double dose and sitting up nights and all that. But then,
maybe, they sleep and you haven't; for it's always the unexpected and
unusual that happens in your case, as this proves. But then, they are

boys, and that's everything nowadays, the way society's going,
especially to people like you, whose husband's trade, though pretty, is
too open and above-board to be a well-paying one, and yet you're
thoroughbreds underneath." (Poor vulgar soul, she didn't in the least
realize how I might take her stricture any more than she saw my desire
to laugh.)
"Of course here and there a girl in society does turn out well and rides
an elephant or a coronet,--of course I mean wears a coronet,--though
ten to one it jams the hairpins into her head, but mostly daughters are
regular hornets,--that is, if you're ambitious and mean to keep in society.
Of course you're not in it, and, being comfortably poor, so to speak,
might be content to see your girls marry their best chance, even if it
wasn't worth much a year, and settle down to babies and minding their
own business; but then they mightn't agree to that, and where would
you and Evan be?
"This nice old house and garden of yours wouldn't hold 'em after they
got through with dolls, and some girls don't even have any doll-days
now. It would be town and travel and change, and you haven't got the
price of that between you all, and to keep this going, too. You'd have to
go to N'York, for a couple of months at least, to a hotel, and what
would that Evan of yours do trailing round to dances? For you're not
built for it, though I did once think you'd be a go in society with that
innocent-wise way, and your nose in the air, when you don't like people,
would pass for family pride. I'd wager soon, in a few years, he'd stop
picking boutonnières in the garden every morning and sailing down to
that 8:15 train as cool as if he owned time, if those boys were girls!
Though if Jenks-Smith gets the Bluff Colony he's planned under way
next spring, there'll soon be some riding and golfing men hereabouts
that'll shake things up a bit,--bridge whist, poker, and perhaps red and
black to help out in the between-seasons." (I little thought then what
this colony and shaking would come to mean.)
"Money or not, it's hard lines with daughters now--work and poor pay
for the mothers mostly. You know that Mrs. Townley that used to visit
me? He was a banker and very rich; died four years ago, and left his
wife with one son, who lived west, and five daughters, four that
travelled in pairs and an odd one,--all well fixed and living in a big