COCKLES AND CRAMBO
Hazel Ripwinkley put on her nankeen
sack and skirt, and her little round, brown straw
hat. For May had come, and almost gone, and it
was a day of early summer warmth.
Hazel’s dress was not a “suit;”
it had been made and worn two summers before suits
were thought of; yet it suited very well, as people’s
things are apt to do, after all, who do not trouble
themselves about minutiae of fashion, and so get no
particular antediluvian marks upon them that show
when the flood subsides.
Her mother knew some things that Hazel
did not. Mrs. Ripwinkley, if she had been asleep
for five and twenty years, had lost none of her perceptive
faculties in the trance. But she did not hamper
her child with any doubts; she let her go on her simple
way, under the shield of her simplicity, to test this
world that she had come into, for herself.
Hazel had written down her little
list of the girls’ names that she would like
to ask; and Mrs. Ripwinkley looked at it with a smile.
There was Ada Geoffrey, the banker’s daughter,
and Lilian Ashburne, the professor’s, heiresses
each, of double lines of birth and wealth. She
could remember how, in her childhood, the old names
sounded, with the respect that was in men’s tones
when they were spoken; and underneath were Lois James
and Katie Kilburnie, children of a printer and a hatter.
They had all been chosen for their purely personal
qualities. A child, let alone, chooses as an angel
chooses.
It remained to be seen how they would come together.
At the very head, in large, fair letters, was,
“MISS
CRAYDOCKE.”
Down at the bottom, she had just added,
“MR.
KINCAID AND DORRIS.”
“For, if I have some
grown folks, mother, perhaps I ought to have other
grown folks, ’to keep the balance
true.’ Besides, Mr. Kincaid and Dorris
always like the little nice times.”
From the day when Dorris Kincaid had
come over with the gray glass vase and her repeated
thanks, when the flowers had done their ministry and
faded, there had been little simple courtesies, each
way, between the opposite houses; and once Kenneth
and his sister had taken tea with the Ripwinkleys,
and they had played “crambo” and “consequences”
in the evening. The real little game of “consequences,”
of which this present friendliness was a link, was
going on all the time, though they did not stop to
read the lines as they folded them down, and “what
the world said” was not one of the items in
their scheme of it at all.
It would have been something worth
while to have followed Hazel as she went her rounds,
asking quietly at each house to see Mrs. This or That,
“as she had a message;” and being shown,
like a little representative of an almost extinct
period, up into the parlor, or the dressing-room of
each lady, and giving her quaint errand.
“I am Hazel Ripwinkley,”
she would say, “and my mother sends her compliments,
and would like to have Lilian,” or
whoever else, “come at four o’clock
to-day, and spend the afternoon and take tea.
I’m to have a little party such as she used to
have, and nobody is to be much dressed up, and we
are only to play games.”
“Why, that is charming!”
cried Mrs. Ashburne; for the feeling of her own sweet
early days, and the old B Square
house, came over her as she heard the words.
“It is Lilian’s music afternoon; but never
mind; give my kind compliments to your mother, and
she will be very happy to come.”
And Mrs. Ashburne stooped down and
kissed Hazel, when she went away.
She stood in the deep carved stone
entrance-way to Mrs. Geoffrey’s house, in the
same fearless, Red Riding Hood fashion, just as she
would have waited in any little country porch up in
Homesworth, where she had need indeed to knock.
Not a whit dismayed was she either,
when the tall manservant opened to her, and admitted
her into the square, high, marble-paved hall, out
of which great doors were set wide into rooms rich
and quiet with noble adorning and soft shading, where
pictures made such a magic upon the walls, and books
were piled from floor to ceiling; and where her little
figure was lost as she went in, and she hesitated
to take a seat anywhere, lest she should be quite hidden
in some great arm-chair or sofa corner, and Mrs. Geoffrey
should not see her when she came down.
So, as the lady entered, there she
was, upright and waiting, on her two feet, in her
nankeen dress, just within the library doors, with
her face turned toward the staircase.
I am Hazel Ripwinkley, she began; as if she had said, I am
Pease-blossom or Mustard-seed; I go to school with Ada. And went on, then,
with her compliments and her party. And at the end she said, very simply,
“Miss Craydocke is coming, and she knows the
games.”
“Miss Craydocke, of Orchard Street? And
where do you live?”
“In Aspen Street, close by,
in Uncle Oldways’ house. We haven’t
lived there very long, only this winter;
before that we always lived in Homesworth.”
“And Homesworth is in the country? Don’t
you miss that?”
“Yes; but Aspen Street isn’t
very bad; we’ve got a garden. Besides,
we like streets and neighbors.”
Then she added, for her
little witch-stick felt spiritually the quality of
what she spoke to, “Wouldn’t
Mr. Geoffrey come for Ada in the evening?”
“I haven’t the least doubt
he would!” said Mrs. Geoffrey, her face all
alive with exquisite and kindly amusement, and catching
the spirit of the thing from the inimitable simplicity
before her, such as never, she did believe, had walked
into anybody’s house before, in this place and
generation, and was no more to be snubbed than a flower
or a breeze or an angel.
It was a piece of Witch Hazel’s
witchery, or inspiration, that she named Miss Craydocke;
for Miss Craydocke was an old, dear friend of Mrs.
Geoffrey’s, in that “heart of things”
behind the fashions, where the kingdom is growing
up. But of course Hazel could not have known
that; something in the lady’s face just made
her think of the same thing in Miss Craydocke’s,
and so she spoke, forgetting to explain, nor wondering
in the very least, when she was met with knowledge.
It was all divining, though, from
the beginning to the end. That was what took
her into these homes, rather than to a score of other
places up and down the self-same streets, where, if
she had got in at all, she would have met strange,
lofty stares, and freezing “thank you’s,”
and “engagements.”
“I’ve found the real folks,
mother, and they’re all coming!” she cried,
joyfully, running in where Mrs. Ripwinkley was setting
little vases and baskets about on shelf and table,
between the white, plain, muslin draperies of the
long parlor windows. In vases and baskets were
sweet May flowers; bunches of deep-hued, rich-scented
violets, stars of blue and white periwinkle, and Miss
Craydocke’s lilies of the valley in their tall,
cool leaves; each kind gathered by itself in clusters
and handfuls. Inside the wide, open fireplace,
behind the high brass fender and the shining andirons,
was a “chimney flower pot,” country fashion,
of green lilac boughs, not blossoms, and
woodbine sprays, and crimson and white tulips.
The room was fair and fragrant, and the windows were
wide open upon vines and grass.
“It looks like you, mother,
just as Mrs. Geoffrey’s house looks like her.
Houses ought to look like people, I think.”
“There’s your surprise,
children. We shouldn’t be doing it right
without a surprise, you know.”
And the surprise was not dolls’
pelerines, but books. “Little Women”
was one, which sent Diana and Hazel off for a delicious
two hours’ read up in their own room until dinner.
After dinner, Miss Craydocke came,
in her purple and white striped mohair and her white
lace neckerchief; and at three o’clock Uncle
Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and
rustling and odorous of peppermint and sassafras,
that it was no use to pretend to wait and be unconscious,
but a pure mercy to unload him so that he might be
able to sit down.
Nobody knows to this day where he
got them; he must have ordered them somewhere, one
would think, long enough before to have special moulds
and implements made; but there were large, beautiful
cockles, not of the old flour-paste sort,
but of clear, sparkling sugar, rose-color, and amber,
and white, with little slips of tinted paper tucked
within, and these printed delicately with pretty rhymes
and couplets, from real poets; things to be truly treasured,
yet simple, for children’s apprehension, and
fancy, and fun. And there were “Salem gibraltars,”
such as we only get out of Essex County now and then,
for a big charitable Fair, when Salem and everywhere
else gets its spirit up to send its best and most
especial; and there were toys and devices in sugar flowers
and animals, hats, bonnets, and boots, apples, and
cucumbers, such as Diana and Hazel, and
even Desire and Helena had never seen before.
“It isn’t quite fair,”
said good Miss Craydocke. “We were to go
back to the old, simple fashions of things; and here
you are beginning over again already with sumptuous
inventions. It’s the very way it came about
before, till it was all spoilt.”
“No,” said Uncle Titus,
stoutly. “It’s only ’Old and
New,’ the very selfsame good old
notions brought to a little modern perfection.
They’re not French flummery, either; and there’s
not a drop of gin, or a flavor of prussic acid, or
any other abominable chemical, in one of those contrivances.
They’re as innocent as they look; good honest
mint and spice and checkerberry and lemon and rose.
I know the man that made ’em!”
Helena Ledwith began to think that
the first person, singular or plural, might have a
good time; but that awful third! Helena’s
“they” was as potent and tremendous as
her mother’s.
“It’s nice,” she
said to Hazel; “but they don’t have inch
things. I never saw them at a party. And
they don’t play games; they always dance.
And it’s broad, hot daylight; and you
haven’t asked a single boy!”
“Why, I don’t know any!
Only Jimmy Scarup; and I guess he’d rather play
ball, and break windows!”
“Jimmy Scarup!” And Helena
turned away, hopeless of Hazel’s comprehending.
But “they” came; and “they”
turned right into “we.”
It was not a party; it was something
altogether fresh and new; the house was a new, beautiful
place; it was like the country. And Aspen Street,
when you got down there, was so still and shady and
sweet smelling and pleasant. They experienced
the delight of finding out something.
Miss Craydocke and Hazel set them
at it, their good time; they had planned it all out, and there was no stiff, shy
waiting. They began, right off, with the Muffin Man. Hazel danced up to
Desire:
“O, do you know
the Muffin Man,
The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?
O, do you know the Muffin Man
That lives in Drury Lane?”
“O, yes, I know the
Muffin Man,
The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man,
O, yes, I know the Muffin Man
That lives in Drury Lane.”
And so they danced off together:
“Two of us know the
Muffin Man,
The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man,
Two of us know the Muffin Man
That lives in Drury Lane.”
And then they besieged Miss Craydocke;
and then the three met Ada Geoffrey, just as she had
come in and spoken to Diana and Mrs. Ripwinkley; and
Ada had caught the refrain, and responded instantly;
and four of them knew the Muffin Man.
I know theyll think its common and queer, and theyll laugh
to-morrow, whispered Helena to Diana, as Hazel drew the lengthening string to
Dorris Kincaids corner and caught her up; but the next minute they were around
Helena in her turn, and they were laughing already, with pure glee; and five
faces bent toward her, and five voices sang,
“O,
don’t you know the Muffin Man?”
And Helena had to sing back that she
did; and then the six made a perfect snarl around
Mrs. Ripwinkley herself, and drew her in; and then
they all swept off and came down across the room upon
Mr. Oldways, who muttered, under the singing, “seven
women! Well, the Bible says so, and I suppose
it’s come!” and then he held out both
hands, while his hard face unbent in every wrinkle,
with a smile that overflowed through all their furrowed
channels, up to his very eyes; like some sparkling
water that must find its level; and there were eight
that knew the Muffin Man.
So nine, and ten, and up to fifteen;
and then, as their line broke away into fragments,
still breathless with fun, Miss Craydocke said, her eyes brimming over with
laughing tears, that always came when she was gay,
“There, now! we all know the
‘Muffin Man;’ therefore it follows, mathematically,
I believe, that we must all know each other. I
think we’ll try a sitting-down game next.
I’ll give you all something. Desire, you
can tell them what to do with it, and Miss Ashburne
shall predict me consequences.”
So they had the “Presentation
Game;” and the gifts, and the dispositions,
and the consequences, when the whispers were over,
and they were all declared aloud, were such hits and
jumbles of sense and nonsense as were almost too queer
to have been believed.
“Miss Craydocke gave me a butter
firkin,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley. “I
was to put it in the parlor and plant vanilla beans
in it; and the consequence would be that Birnam Wood
would come to Dunsinane.”
“She gave me a wax doll,”
said Helena. “I was to buy it a pair of
high-heeled boots and a chignon; and the consequence
would be that she would have to stand on her head.”
“She gave me,” said Mr.
Oldways, “an iron spoon. I was to deal out
sugar-plums with it; and the consequence would be that
you would all go home.”
“She gave me,” said Lois
James, “Woman’s Rights. I shouldn’t
know what to do with them; and the consequence would
be a terrible mortification to all my friends.”
“She gave me,” said Hazel,
“a real good time. I was to pass it round;
and the consequence would be an earthquake.”
Then they had “Scandal;”
a whisper, repeated rapidly from ear to ear.
It began with, “Luclarion is in the kitchen making
tea-biscuits;” and it ended with the horrible
announcement that there were “two hundred gallons
of hot pitch ready, and that everybody was to be tipped
into it.”
“Characters,” and “Twenty
Questions,” and “How, When, and Where,”
followed; and then they were ready for a run again,
and they played “Boston,” in which Mr.
Oldways, being “Sceattle,” was continually
being left out, whereupon he declared at last, that
he didn’t believe there was any place for him,
or even that he was down anywhere on the map, and
it wasn’t fair, and he was going to secede;
and that broke up the play; for the groat fun of all
the games had come to be Miss Craydocke and Uncle
Titus, as it always is the great fun to the young
ones when the elders join in, the older
and the soberer, the better sport; there is always
something in the “fathers looking on;”
that is the way I think it is among them who always
do behold the Face of the Father in heaven, smiling
upon their smiles, glowing upon their gladness.
In the tea-room, it was all even more
delightful yet; it was further out into the garden,
shaded at the back by the deep leafiness of grape-vines,
and a trellis work with arches in it that ran up at
the side, and would be gay by and by with scarlet
runners, and morning-glories, and nasturtiums, that
were shooting up strong and swift already, from the
neatly weeded beds.
Inside, was the tall old semicircular
sideboard, with gingerbread grooves carved all over
it; and the real brass “dogs,” with heads
on their fore-paws, were lying in the fire-place,
under the lilac boughs; and the square, plain table
stood in the midst, with its glossy white cloth that
touched the floor at the corners, and on it were the
identical pink mugs, and a tall glass pitcher of milk,
and plates of the thinnest and sweetest bread and
butter, and early strawberries in a white basket lined
with leaves, and the traditional round frosted cakes
upon a silver plate with a network rim.
And Luclarion and Mrs. Ripwinkley
waited upon them all, and it was still no party, to
be compared or thought of with any salad and ice-pudding
and Germania-band affair, such as they had had all
winter; but something utterly fresh and new and by
itself, place, and entertainment, and people,
and all.
After tea, they went out into the
garden; and there, under the shady horse-chestnuts,
was a swing; and there were balls with which Hazel
showed them how to play “class;” tossing
in turn against the high brick wall, and taking their
places up and down, according to the number of their
catches. It was only Miss Craydocke’s “Thread
the Needle” that got them in again; and after
that, she showed them another simple old dancing game,
the “Winding Circle,” from which they
were all merrily and mysteriously untwisting themselves
with Miss Craydocke’s bright little thin face
and her fluttering cap ribbons, and her spry little
trot leading them successfully off, when the door
opened, and the grand Mr. Geoffrey walked in; the man
who could manage State Street, and who had stood at
the right hand of Governor and President, with his
clear brain, and big purse, and generous hand, through
the years of the long, terrible war; the man whom
it was something for great people to get to their dinners,
or to have walk late into an evening drawing-room
and dignify an occasion for the last half hour.
Mrs. Ripwinkley was just simply glad
to see him; so she was to see Kenneth Kincaid, who
came a few minutes after, just as Luclarion brought
the tray of sweetmeats in, which Mrs. Ripwinkley had
so far innovated upon the gracious-grandmother plan
as to have after tea, instead of before.
The beautiful cockles and their rhymes
got their heads all together around the large table,
for the eating and the reading. Mr. Geoffrey
and Uncle Titus sat talking European politics together,
a little aside. The sugar-plums lasted a good
while, with the chatter over them; and then, before
they quite knew what it was all for, they had got
slips of paper and lead pencils before them, and there
was to be a round of “Crambo” to wind
up.
“O, I don’t know how!”
and “I never can!” were the first words,
as they always are, when it was explained to the uninitiated;
but Miss Craydocke assured them that “everybody
could;” and Hazel said that “nobody expected
real poetry; it needn’t be more than two lines,
and those might be blank verse, if they were very
hard, but jingles were better;” and so the questions
and the wards were written and folded, and the papers
were shuffled and opened amid outcries of, “O,
this is awful!” “What a word to
get in!” “Why, they haven’t the
least thing to do with each other!”
“That’s the beauty of
it,” said Miss Craydocke, unrelentingly; “to
make them have; and it is funny how much things
do have to do with each other when they once happen
to come across.”
Then there were knit brows, and desperate
scratchings, and such silence that Mr. Geoffrey and
Uncle Titus stopped short on the Alabama question,
and looked round to see what the matter was.
Kenneth Kincaid had been modestly
listening to the older gentlemen, and now and then
venturing to inquire or remark something, with an
intelligence that attracted Mr. Geoffrey; and presently
it came out that he had been south with the army;
and then Mr. Geoffrey asked questions of him, and
they got upon Reconstruction business, and comparing
facts and exchanging conclusions, quite as if one was
not a mere youth with only his eyes and his brains
and his conscience to help him in his first grapple
with the world in the tangle and crisis at which he
found it, and the other a grave, practiced, keen-judging
man, the counsellor of national leaders.
After all, they had no business to bring the great,
troublesome, heavy-weighted world into a childs party. I wish man never would;
though it did not happen badly, as it all turned out, that they did a little of
it in this instance. If they had thought of it, Crambo was good for them too,
for a change; and presently they did think of it; for Dorris called out in
distress, real or pretended, from the table,
“Kentie, here’s something
you must really take off my hands! I haven’t
the least idea what to do with it.”
And then came a cry from Hazel,
“No fair! We’re all
just as badly off, and there isn’t one of us
that has got a brother to turn to. Here’s
another for Mr. Kincaid.”
“There are plenty more.
Come, Mr. Oldways, Mr. Geoffrey, won’t you try
‘Crambo?’ There’s a good deal in
it, as there is in most nonsense.”
“We’ll come and see what
it is,” said Mr. Geoffrey; and so the chairs
were drawn up, and the gray, grave heads looked on
over the young ones.
“Why, Hazel’s got through!”
said Lois, scratching violently at her paper, and
obliterating three obstinate lines.
“O, I didn’t bother, you
see! I just stuck the word right in, like a pin
into a pincushion, and let it go. There wasn’t
anything else to do with it.”
“I’ve got to make my pincushion,”
said Dorris.
“I should think you had!
Look at her! She’s writing her paper all
over! O, my gracious, she must have done it before!”
“Mother and Mr. Geoffrey are
doing heaps, too! We shall have to publish a
book,” said Diana, biting the end of her pencil,
and taking it easy. Diana hardly ever got the
rhymes made in time; but then she always admired everybody’s
else, which was a good thing for somebody to be at
leisure to do.
“Uncle Oldways and Lilian are folding up,”
said Hazel.
“Five minutes more,” said
Miss Craydocke, keeping the time with her watch before
her. “Hush!”
When the five minutes were rapped
out, there were seven papers to be read. People
who had not finished this time might go on when the
others took fresh questions.
Hazel began reading, because she had been ready first.
“‘What is the difference
between sponge-cake and doughnuts?’ ‘Hallelujah.’”
“Airiness, lightness, and
insipidity;
Twistiness, spiciness, and solidity.
Hallelujah! I’ve got through!
That is the best that I can do!’”
There was a shout at Hazel’s pinsticking.
“Now, Uncle Titus! You finished next.”
“My question is a very comprehensive
one,” said Uncle Titus, “with a very concise
and suggestive word. ‘How wags the world?’
‘Slambang.’”
“’The world wags
on
With lies and slang;
With show and vanity,
Pride and inanity,
Greed and insanity,
And a great slambang!’”
“That’s only one
verse,” said Miss Craydocke. “There’s
another; but he didn’t write it down.”
Uncle Titus laughed, and tossed his
Crambo on the table. “It’s true,
so far, anyway,” said he.
“So far is hardly ever
quite true,” said Miss Craydocke
Lilian Ashburne had to answer the
question whether she had ever read “Young’s
Night Thoughts;” and her word was “Comet.”
“’Pray might
I be allowed a pun,
To help me through with just this one?
I’ve tried to read Young’s
Thoughts of Night,
But never yet could come it, quite.’”
“O, O, O! That’s
just like Lilian, with her soft little ‘prays’
and ‘allow me’s,’ and her little
pussy-cat ways of sliding through tight places, just
touching her whiskers!”
“It’s quite fair,”
said Lilian, smiling, “to slide through if you
can.”
“Now, Mr. Geoffrey.”
And Mr. Geoffrey read,
“‘What is your favorite color?’
‘One-hoss.’”
“’Do you mean,
my friend, for a one-hoss shay,
Or the horse himself, black,
roan, or bay?
In truth, I think I can hardly say;
I believe, for a nag, “I bet on
the gray.”
“’For a shay,
I would rather not have yellow,
Or any outright, staring color,
That makes the crowd look after a fellow,
And the little gamins hoot and
bellow.
“’Do you mean
for ribbons? or gowns? or eyes?
Or flowers? or gems? or in sunset skies?
For many questions, as many replies,
Drops of a rainbow take rainbow dyes.
“’The world is
full, and the world is bright;
Each thing to its nature parts the light;
And each for its own to the Perfect sight
Wears that which is comely, and sweet,
and right.’”
O, Mr. Geoffrey! Thats lovely! cried the girl voices, all
around him. And Ada made a pair of great eyes at her father, and said,
“What an awful humbug you have
been, papa! To have kept the other side up with
care all your life! Who ever suspected that
of you?”
Diana and Hazel were not taken so
much by surprise, their mother had improvised little
nursery jingles for them all their baby days, and
had played Crambo with them since; so they were very
confident with their “Now, mother:”
and looked calmly for something creditable.
“‘What is your favorite
name?’” read Mrs. Ripwinkley. “And
the word is ‘Stuff.’”
“’When I was
a little child,
Looking very meek and mild,
I liked grand, heroic names,
Of warriors, or stately dames:
Zenobia, and Cleopatra;
(No rhyme for that this side Sumatra;)
Wallace, and Helen Mar, Clotilda,
Berengaria, and Brunhilda;
Maximilian; Alexandra;
Hector, Juno, and Cassandra;
Charlemagne and Britomarte,
Washington and Bonaparte;
Victoria and Guinevere,
And Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
Shall I go on with all this
stuff,
Or do you think it is enough?
I cannot tell you what dear name
I love the best; I play a game;
And tender earnest doth belong
To quiet speech, not silly song.’”
“That’s just like mother;
I should have stopped as soon as I’d got the
‘stuff’ in; but she always shapes off with
a little morriowl,” said Hazel. “Now,
Desire!”
Desire frantically scribbled a long line at the end of what
she had written; below, that is, a great black morass of scratches that
represented significantly the Slough of Despond she had got into over the
winding up, and then gave,
“‘Which way would you
rather travel, north or south?’ ‘Goosey-gander.’”
“’O, goosey-gander!
If I might wander,
It should be toward the sun;
The blessed South
Should fill my mouth
With ripeness just begun.
For bleak hills, bare,
With stunted, spare,
And scrubby, piney trees,
Her gardens rare,
And vineyards fair,
And her rose-scented breeze.
For fearful blast,
Skies overcast,
And sudden blare and scare
Long, stormless moons,
And placid noons,
And all sorts of comfortablenesses, there!’”
“That makes me think of father’s
horse running away with him once,” said Helena,
“when he had to head him right up against a brick
wall, and knock everything all to smash before he
could stop!”
“Anybody else?”
“Miss Kincaid, I think,”
said Mr. Geoffrey. He had been watching Dorris’s
face through the play, flashing and smiling with the
excitement of her rhyming, and the slender, nervous
fingers twisting tremulously the penciled slip while
she had listened to the others.
“If it isn’t all rubbed
out,” said Dorris, coloring and laughing to
find how badly she had been treating her own effusion.
“You see it was rather
an awful question, ’What do you want
most?’ And the word is, ‘Thirteen.’”
She caught her breath a little quickly as she began:
“’Between yourself,
dear, myself, and the post,
There are the thirteen things that I want
the most.
I want to be, sometimes, a little stronger;
I want the days to be a little longer;
I’d like to have a few less things
to do;
I’d better like to better do the
few:
I want and this might almost lead my wishes,
A bigger place to keep my mops and dishes.
I want a horse; I want a little buggy,
To ride in when the days grow hot and
muggy;
I want a garden; and, perhaps its funny,
But now and then I want a little money.
I want an easy way to do my hair;
I want an extra dress or two to wear;
I want more patience; and when all is
given,
I think I want to die and go to heaven!’”
“I never saw such bright people
in all my life!” said Ada Geoffrey, when the
outcry of applause for Dorris had subsided, and they
began to rise to go. “But the worst
of all is papa! I’ll never get over it
of you, see if I do! Such a cheat! Why, it’s
like playing dumb all your life, and then just speaking
up suddenly in a quiet way, some day, as if it was
nothing particular, and nobody cared!”
With Hazel’s little divining-rod,
Mrs. Ripwinkley had reached out, testing the world
for her, to see what some of it might be really made
of. Mrs. Geoffrey, from her side, had reached
out in turn, also, into this fresh and simple opportunity,
to see what might be there worth while.
“How was it, Aleck?” she
asked of her husband, as they sat together in her
dressing-room, while she brushed out her beautiful
hair.
“Brightest people I have been
among for a long time and nicest,”
said the banker, concisely. “A real, fresh
little home, with a mother in it. Good place
for Ada to go, and good girls for her to know; like
the ones I fell in love with a hundred years ago.”
“That rhymed oracle, to
say nothing of the fraction of a compliment, ought
to settle it,” said Mrs. Geoffrey, laughing.
“Rhymes have been the order
of the evening. I expect to talk in verse for
a week at least.”
And then he told her about the “Crambo.”
A week after, Mrs. Ledwith was astonished to find, lying on
the mantel in her sisters room, a card that had been sent up the day before,
“MRS.
ALEXANDER H. GEOFFREY.”