The Lovely Lady | Page 4

it happened

that the mortgage dragon did not get his payment and Peter gave up the
high school to get a place in Greenslet's grocery at Bloombury. And
since there were the books to be made up after supper, and as Bet, the
mare, after being driven in the delivery wagon all day, could not be let
stand half the night in the cold at the schoolhouse door, it turned out
that Peter had not been once to the dancing school. In the beginning he
had done something for himself in the way of a hall for dancing,
thrown out from the House of the Shining Walls, in which he and the
Princess Ada, to lovely, soundless strains, had whirled away, and found
occasion to say things to each other such as no ballroom could
afford;--bright star pointed occasions which broke and scattered before
the little hints of sound that crept up the stair to advise him that Ellen
was stifling back the pain for fear of waking him. They had moved
Ellen's bed downstairs as a way of getting on better with the possibility
of her being bedridden all that winter, and the tiny whispered moan
recalled him to the dread that as the half yearly term came around, what
with doctor's bills and delicacies, the mortgage dragon would have not
even his sop of interest, and remain whole and threatening as before.
When Ellen was able to sit up in bed the mother moved her sewing in
beside it. Then Peter would sit on the other side of the lamp with a
book, and the walls of the House rose up from its pages gilded finely,
and the lights would come out and the dancing begin, but before he
could get more than a word with the Princess, he would hear Ellen:
"Peter, oh, Peter! I wish you wouldn't be always with your nose in a
book. I wish you would talk sometimes."
"What about, Ellen?"
"Oh, Peter, you are the worst. I should think you would take some
interest in things."
"What sort of things?" Peter wished to know.
"Why, who comes in the store, and what they say, and everything."
"Mrs. Sleason wanted us to open a kit of mackerel to see if she'd like

it," began Peter literally, "and we persuaded her to take two cans of
sardines instead. Does that interest you?"
"Have you sold any of the blue tartan yet?"
"Ada Brown bought seven yards of it."
"Oh, Peter! And trimmings?"
"Six yards of black velvet ribbon--yes, I forgot--Mrs. Blackman is to
make it up for her. I heard Mrs. Brown say she would call for the
linings."
"She's having it made up for Jim Harvey's birthday," Ellen guessed
shrewdly. "He's twenty-one, you know.... People say she's engaged to
him."
Peter felt the walls of the House which had stood out waiting for him
during this interlude, fall inward into the gulf of blackness. Nobody
said anything for two or three ticks of the large kitchen clock, and then
Ellen burst out:
"I think she's a nasty, flirty, stuck-up thing; that's what I think!"
"Shs--hss! Ellen," said her mother.
"Peter," demanded Ellen, "are you reading again?"
"I beg your pardon, Ellen." Peter did not know that he had turned a
page.
"Don't you ever wish for anything for yourself, Peter? Don't you wish
you were rich?"
"No, Ellen, I don't know that I ever do."
But as the winter got on and the news of Ada Brown's engagement was
confirmed, he must have wished it a great many times.

One evening late in January he was sitting with his mother very quietly
by the kitchen stove, the front of which was opened to throw out the
heat; there was the good smell of the supper in the room, for though he
had a meal with the Greenslets at six, his mother always made a point
of having something hot for him when he came in from bedding down
the mare, and the steam of it on the window-panes made dull smears of
the reflected light. The shade of the lamp was drawn down until the
ceiling of the room was all in shadow save for the bright escape from
the chimney which shone directly overhead, round and yellow as
twenty dollars, and as Peter leaned back in his chair, looking up, it
might have been that resemblance which gave a turn to his thoughts
and led him to say to his mother:
"Why did my father never get rich?"
"I hardly know, Peter. He used to say that he couldn't afford it. There
were so many other things he wished to do; and I wished them, too.
When we were young we did them together. Then your father was the
sort of man who always gave