The Other Girls | Page 5

it with more outward calmness. Although baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of society out of the Roxeter town library.
There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and re-arranging were all done. The axle of the ph?ton had been split, and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned, dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window, and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much.
She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere before. She didn't know--as we don't about the moon--whether there might be atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually did live, much after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint rocker in the other,--with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,--white quilted covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end of the bed.
She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,--only she never really supposed about it,--some sort of places, behind and above it, under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,--the latter not out of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor cupboard,--she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn, bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips without distaste or harm.
"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham.
The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie thought she must mean before her start, about which she was growing anxious.
"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed. "I wonder if the ph?ton will be ready soon?"
"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames."
Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea.
The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green, swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a wheel, or get a horse shod.
"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out involuntarily.
Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes.
"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never seemed the same again."
If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as delicately as she did.
Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming, pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed, quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell off in