The Bent Twig | Page 6

to them to see their father
sweeping his third-floor study with his own hands, and they were quite
used to a family routine which included housework for every one of
them. Indeed, a certain amount of this was part of the family fun.
"Come on, folks!" Professor Marshall would call, rising up from the
breakfast table, "Tuesday--day to clean the living-room--all hands turn
to!" In a gay helter-skelter all hands turned to. The lighter furniture was
put out on the porch. Professor Marshall, joking and laughing, donned a
loose linen overall suit to protect his "University clothes," and cleaned
the bare floor with a big oiled mop; Mrs. Marshall, silent and swift,
looked after mirrors, windows, the tops of bookcases, things hard for
children to reach; Sylvia flourished a duster; and Judith and Lawrence
out on the porch, each armed with a whisk-broom, brushed and
whacked at the chairs and sofas. There were no rugs to shake, and it
took but an instant to set things back in their places in the
clean-smelling, dustless room.
This daily drill, coming as it did early in the morning, usually escaped
the observation of any but passing farmers, who saw nothing amiss in it;
but facetiously exaggerated reports of its humors reached the campus,
and a certain set considered it very clever to lay bets as to whether the
Professor of Political Economy would pull out of his pocket a
handkerchief, or a duster, or a child's shirt, for it was notorious that the
children never had nursemaids and that their father took as much care
of them as their mother.
The question of clothes, usually such a sorely insoluble problem for
academic people of small means, was solved by the Marshalls in an
eccentric, easy-going manner which was considered by the other
faculty families as nothing less than treasonable to their caste.
Professor Marshall, it is true, having to make a public appearance on
the campus every day, was generally, like every other professor,
undistinguishable from a commercial traveler. But Mrs. Marshall, who

often let a good many days pass without a trip to town, had adopted
early in her married life a sort of home uniform, which year after year
she wore in one form or another. It varied according to the season, and
according to the occasion on which she wore it, but it had certain
unchanging characteristics. It was always very plain as to line, and
simple as to cut, having a skirt neither full nor scant, a waist crossed in
front with a white fichu, and sleeves reaching just below the elbow
with white turn-back cuffs. As Mrs. Marshall, though not at all pretty,
was a tall, upright, powerfully built woman, with a dark, shapely head
gallantly poised on her shoulders, this garb, whether short-skirted, of
blue serge in the morning, or trailing, of ruby-colored cashmere in the
evening, was very becoming to her. But there is no denying that it was
always startlingly and outrageously unfashionable. At a time when
every woman and female child in the United States had more cloth in
her sleeves than in all the rest of her dress, the rounded muscles of Mrs.
Marshall's arm, showing through the fabric of her sleeves, smote
shockingly upon the eye of the ordinary observer, trained to the
American habit of sheep-like uniformity of appearance. And at the time
when the front of every woman's waist fell far below her belt in a
copiously blousing sag, Mrs. Marshall's trim tautness had in it
something horrifying. It must be said for her that she did not go out of
her way to inflict these concussions upon the brains of spectators, since
she always had in her closet one evening dress and one street dress,
sufficiently approximating the prevailing style to pass unnoticed. These
costumes lasted long, and they took in the long run but little from the
Marshall exchequer: for she wore them seldom, only assuming what
her husband called, with a laugh, her "disguise" when going into town.
For a long time, until Sylvia's individuality began to assert itself, the
question of dress for the children was solved, with similar ease, by the
typical Marshall expedient, most heartily resented by their faculty
acquaintances, the mean-spirited expedient of getting along
comfortably on inadequate means by not attempting to associate with
people to whose society their brains and cultivation gave them the
right--that is to say, those families of La Chance whose incomes were
from three to five times that of college professors. The Marshall
children played, for the most part, with the children of their neighbors,

farmers, or small merchants, and continued this humble connection
after they went into the public schools, where their parents sent them,
instead of to "the" exclusive private school of town. Consequently the
plainest,