The Other Girls | Page 5

together again, and to wash her face
and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham came bustling
after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were all very delighted
and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's daughter quite to
themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait upon and take care of.
Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good deal; her daughters took
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 phæton 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 phæton 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