The Inner Sisterhood | Page 7

never do any thing startling! I wish my manners were better--but they are not! After one of Aunt Patsey's talks on good form, and strict propriety, I try to improve--regenerate, if possible. I often watch Miss Lena Searlwood, one of the older girls, who is a great favorite with Aunt Patsey--but it is no use! She is a self-contained woman, never ill at ease, and who puts you, and at once, at rights with yourself. She is a most beautiful and discreet talker! She would rather die, burn at the stake, suffer on the rack, than tell even the suspicion of a family secret! Aunt Patsey is always talking her up to me, wishing that I would be only a little bit like her anyhow. So the other night, at a party, I took special care to notice the attractive Lena. She is so graceful; quiet grace, ma calls it. She leaned against a heavy, carved chimney-piece, with dark-red plush hangings, and she looked for all the world just like a tall, white flower, slender, beautiful! She was slowly picking to pieces, leaf by leaf, a pale-pink rose, which she had stolen away from somewhere about her willowy, white throat. And while she was doing all this--and it took quite a while, too--she looked full in the face of the man by her side, that rather good-looking, stuck-up Calburt Young, and said nothing--absolutely not a word! She did this long enough to make me almost lose my breath. I could not do a thing like that; it would give me nervous prostration sure! Yet, I know it is very effective! It was just like some picture you read about, and it was beautiful, striking, down to the smallest detail. But situations effective, and details pleasing, are not in my line, and they are just as much a mystery as improper fractions used to be when I was a schoolgirl. I hated my school! It was called a "Young Ladies' Seminary." It was a fashionable, intellectual hot-house, where premature, fleeting blooms were cultivated regardless of any future consequence. But I was a barren bush! I never fashion-flowered into a profusion of showy blossoms. Aunt Patsey said that I did not reap the harvest of my golden opportunities; but pa, he growled and grumbled a good deal when the bills came pouring in, but paid them, and roundly swore that he was glad he had no more fool-daughters to finish off in a fashionable seminary.
I have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and it gets me in trouble all the time. I don't mean any harm; but I can't help telling a good thing when I hear it or see it myself. Now that same Calburt Young can't bear me; he hates me in good fashion because I made fun of his doleful air, and said that he had the looks and the manners of a man who had, in a desperate mood, shot down his sweetheart, concealed the fact, and was suffering the pangs of deep remorse for the dreadful deed. He heard about it and got angry! He does look awful gloomy! He says I am crude, very crude, and put people on edge; and that I am so good-natured, so good-humored all the time that it reduces less fortunate people into a state of most desperate defiance--defiance against my everlasting flow of animal spirits, unchecked by any thing. He told all that to Sophia Gilder, and Sophia is my bosom-friend; so she told me! Aunt Patsey has a great admiration for her mother, Mrs. John Robert Gilder, but says that Sophia, poor girl, is a milk-sop--weak, weak! and taps her shining forehead knowingly. Auntie has a most alarming way of disposing of people! I know all about her methods--gracious goodness! I ought by this time.
About two or three months after I was finished off at the Seminary, Miss Lena Searlwood gave a little affair in my honor. She called it a tea--it really was more like a dinner! They do entertain so well! I was taken home afterward by that Calburt Young--a great privilege I suppose! He was in a bad humor anyhow; had not seen enough of Miss Lena! He let me do all of the talking, never once suggesting a new topic, and listened with an air, not of attention, but enforced toleration. It made me furious! Two or three times he said "Yes?" which was really worse than nothing! Finally, when near home, he turned to me and in a tired, indifferent tone, said: "Beg pardon, Miss Wing; you are just out, I believe! What did you study while at school?" It was a fling--I knew it--so I answered, "I studied how to be rude to arrogant, patronizing people who are forever asking impudent questions with