CHAPTER SEVENTH
A SPOOL OF TWIST
The shop windows on the opening day proved most alluring to Miss Virginia. There were two,—one overlooking the square of lawn on the Terrace, the other, Pleasant Street. Between them, placed across the corner, was the door.
The Terrace window was full of plants, while on the Pleasant Street side there was a tempting display of color. Miss Virginia hunted up her distance glasses, which she seldom used, in order the better to view it; but she failed to make out anything in particular. Her ardor might have suggested an archæologist over a cuneiform inscription, as she tried to decide whether a certain patch of blue and white was a pillow or a table-cover.
Charlotte openly stopped to view the window on her way home from school, and Miss Virginia, observing it, privately questioned her.
SECURELY ENTRENCHED BEHIND THE LACE CURTAIN SHE LEVELLED HER GLASS
"You ought to go over and look in, Aunt Virginia," she said. "There are the prettiest baskets you ever saw."
Miss Virginia adored baskets.
"And there is the dearest sofa pillow."
She had decided on a pillow for Caroline's birthday.
"And, Aunt Virginia, there are the cunningest little collars with cuffs to match," Charlotte continued with mischievous eyes.
Miss Virginia grew impatient. It was out of all reason that such desirable things should be brought almost to her door and yet be beyond her reach.
"It wouldn't be giving them much encouragement just to look in the window," observed Charlotte. "I'll tell you," she cried the next minute, "opera glasses!"
"My dear, look at my neighbors through an opera glass?"
"But they want to be looked at," insisted Charlotte, with unanswerable logic.
Miss Virginia allowed herself to be persuaded, and, securely entrenched behind the lace curtain, she levelled her glass. As is ever the case with one who dallies with temptation, the result was an increased desire to have that pillow in her hands.
Standing absorbed in contemplation, she suddenly, without intending it, turned her gaze upon one of the upper windows; and as she did so the muslin draperies parted and a pair of merry eyes belonging to a pretty face looked straight into hers.
"I beg your pardon," cried Miss Virginia, dropping her glass and sinking into a chair, "I shall be ashamed of this to my dying day," she groaned, while Charlotte went off into fits of laughter.
It was some time before she could be brought to realize she had not been seen. "Not that that makes it much better," she added contritely. "And, Charlotte, don't mention it to your Aunt Caroline. I think my ideas of propriety are as strict as hers, but I do not succeed so well in living up to them. I fear I am, as she says, childish."
"I shall not say anything about it, and I am sure I think you are very nice, Aunt Virginia," answered Charlotte, still laughing.
The suspicion that Charlotte liked her better than she did Caroline was a secret pleasure to Miss Virginia, and she flushed prettily as she said, "Thank you, dear; I am far from what I should be."
Charlotte went to take her music lesson; Mrs. Millard was attending a club meeting; the house was very quiet as Miss Virginia sat down to her embroidery. While she worked, the face so vividly imprinted on her memory in that moment's view continued to rise before her. She began to feel something like sympathy for its owner. She had not supposed it would be such an attractive shop. What possible harm could there be in going over just to look? She might even go in and explain to the proprietor that she had made a mistake in coming into the neighborhood. It would be a kindness. She could use a spool of buttonhole twist as an excuse. She really needed it.
Then she saw the foolishness of all this and tried to think of something else. She worked another scallop, and concluded to go for a walk.
When she stepped out of the gate, she turned her back upon the shop and walked in the opposite direction, but a quarter of an hour later she might have been seen approaching it by way of Pleasant Street.
It was a beautiful October day; there was a suggestion of autumn in the maples, but the air was soft as spring. As she stood before the door her heart beat guiltily; her own home across the way wore an oddly unfamiliar look.
Being a shop one was, of course, expected to open the door and walk in. Miss Virginia did so, and for a bewildered moment felt she had made a mistake, for there was nothing in the room she entered that seemed to bear any relation to a shop.
In the window, where the ferns and palms were, three persons sat, two young women and a small boy in socks. One of the three rose and came to meet her. The identity of the face with the one she had seen through the opera glass so recently, added to her confusion.
"Can I show you something?"
Miss Virginia gazed at the speaker despairingly. "I have forgotten what I came for," she stammered.
It might have been an everyday occurrence to have customers who had forgotten what they wanted, for anything the manner of the young woman showed. She smiled indeed, but sympathetically, saying she often forgot things herself; and, pushing forward a willow chair, added, "Won't you sit down and let me show you some of our things?"
Not seeing her way clear to escape, Miss Virginia accepted the chair. There were other chairs of the same variety, some of them supplied with cushions; around the olive-tinted walls were low cases which might hold books or anything; there was a table with a lamp and magazines upon it, and in the corner fireplace a low fire flickered. The most businesslike piece of furniture was the long table upon which the young woman was laying out a bewitching assortment of collars and cuffs of a daintiness that went to the heart. Miss Virginia forgot her embarrassment in her pleasure at the array of pretty things.
The small boy crossed the room, and depositing a gray flannel donkey on the table leaned upon Miss Virginia's chair. He was a pretty child, and she smiled at him as he lifted his serious brown eyes.
"Jack likes to see what you are doing, but you mustn't sell him by mistake, Miss Norah," he said.
"Is this your little boy?" she asked.
"No, James Mandeville is a neighbor and very good friend of ours. Aren't you, Infinitesimal James?"
He nodded emphatically, and continued to look on with interest while Norah hung soft-tinted fabrics over a convenient rack, and brought out baskets of all colors and shapes.
It was clearly James Mandeville's fault that Miss Wilbur was unable to preserve that distant manner which was the only proper attitude toward this objectionable shop. When he laid his plump hand on hers and looked up at her in silent good fellowship, she felt a thrill of pleasure. Could any one refuse a child's offer of friendship? Not Miss Virginia, certainly. She bent and touched his cheek with her lips. James Mandeville, moved to further demonstration, brought the donkey and laid him on her lap.
"Don't show me anything more," she said, patting the donkey. "Everything is beautiful. I really didn't come expecting to buy, but I must have one of these collars." She laid a bit of embroidery against her sleeve and looked down at it thoughtfully.
The sunlight fell slantingly across the room, gleaming in James Mandeville's short curls and emphasizing all the cosiness and pleasantness of her surroundings. The spirit of friendliness grew strong in Miss Virginia. She felt in no haste to leave.
While Norah searched for something in one of the cases, Miss Wilbur peeped around the chair back at the occupant of the window who was employing herself with knitting. She was not—so Miss Virginia thought—as attractive as her associate, although she could not be called ordinary. Meanwhile James Mandeville investigated her shopping bag with absorbed interest.
The opening of the shop door interrupted her thoughts, and before she had time to push aside the draperies which, disposed upon the rack, intervened between her and the door, she heard a cool, clear voice announce, "I wish a spool of twist—black if you please."
Miss Virginia gazed wildly toward the door at the other end of the room, her first impression being that Caroline had come in search of her. The next moment she realized with surprise and amusement that her sister had come altogether on her own account and had asked for the very same thing she herself had thought of purchasing. Miss Virginia braced herself for the inevitable encounter, and when Miss Norah returned, thanked her for her kindness in showing so many of her wares, and selected one from the collars before her. The while she heard her sister's voice.
"Do you consider this a good locality for a shop?" Mrs. Millard asked. "It seems to me quite otherwise, and I think it the only proper course to tell you that the neighborhood strongly objects to such an intrusion."
Miss Virginia felt her face grow hot.
"Isn't it a little late to tell us this?" The tall young woman who had put down her knitting to serve the newcomer seemed not a whit abashed at Mrs. Millard's manner. If anything, she was the more queenly of the two, and might have been bestowing a favor as she handed back the change.
Norah's sunny face intervened, "We are very sorry if you don't want us," she said, "for we shall have to stay for the present. We think we are quite as nice as a drug store, and perhaps we shall be able to convince you of it before long."
Could Caroline hold out against such winning address? What she might have said or done was never known, for James Mandeville, desiring to see what was going on, and attempting to crawl under the rack with its burden of fabrics, precipitated it upon himself and was lost in the ruins, while Miss Virginia was revealed in all her ignominy, with a flannel donkey in her lap, to the eyes of her relative.
"Virginia! I am astonished!"
Miss Wilbur rose to the occasion. "So am I, Caroline. I, too, came to get a spool of twist." There is good authority for the assertion that one may smile and be a villain, but hitherto such depths of perfidy had been unsuspected in Miss Virginia.
The united efforts of the shopkeepers were required to disentangle James Mandeville and quiet his cries of alarm. In the struggle Miss Wilbur's bag suffered a complete upturn, and her small change was scattered to the four corners of the room.
Mrs. Millard stood apart looking on in disdain at the confusion, when again the shop door opened, this time to admit Miss Sarah Leigh who advanced and addressed her, fumbling in her pocket-book meanwhile and not lifting her eyes. "I want a spool of twist," she said, producing a sample of blue silk. "Why, Caroline Wilbur!" and she stared in amazement.
Norah who had set James Mandeville, still weeping, out of harm's way on the table, met Miss Sarah's bewildered gaze with a frank smile, as if she appreciated the joke.
"Do you call this a shop?" Miss Sarah demanded; adding, "Well, if there isn't Virginia! Are Judge Russell and Mr. Goodman hiding somewhere? Is this a conspiracy?"
"I'll explain later," said Mrs. Millard, with dignity. "Virginia, are you ready?"
As they crossed Pleasant Street together, Miss Sarah was disposed to make merry at Mrs. Millard's expense, but that lady's haughtiness was extreme. There was nothing funny in her actions. She had gone to the shop with a purpose, thinking it only the part of fairness to tell them frankly they were not wanted in the neighborhood.
"That is what I thought of doing," said Miss Virginia. But who can blame her sister for looking incredulous.
"Well, I'm going again," said Miss Sarah, pausing at the gate. "It is an interesting place."
Miss Virginia agreed with her, and yet she was beginning to feel a little doubtful about her own behavior this afternoon. She feared she had not been quite dignified.
"Sarah Leigh was never a person of very strong convictions," her sister remarked, as they waited at the door.
"Why, I don't know, Caroline,—perhaps they are just different."
"Really, I don't understand you, Virginia," was Mrs. Millard's response, nor did she manifest any desire for enlightenment.
Miss Virginia felt that her conduct that afternoon was embraced in her sister's remark, and that it would be quite hopeless to try to explain.