“Mrs. Mason,” said Elsie, “you make a mistake if you think I have any longing for the mere name of lady. I believe I could be your cook all my days and yet make myself worthy of the character and appellation. It is not what one does so much as in the manner of doing it that lies the distinction, and I have as natural a longing for all things noble and beautiful as the flowers have for the sun, and just as good a right to reach for them.”
“Certainly,” assented Mrs. Mason; “but with such surroundings you haven’t a very hopeful chance of obtaining them. Your life is not a very happy one.”
“Yes, it is,” replied Elsie stoutly, “because I make it so. I wouldn’t change places with the richest woman in this city, if by so doing I had to lose the dear hopes and sympathies for every day living that make even our misfortunes bearable. O Mrs. Mason, before the fire and Margaret’s sickness, nothing could have exceeded the daily delight of our lives, even with all their hard work and privation. Something to believe in, some hope for humanity, some trifle in word or deed for each other—why, it seemed like a foretaste of heaven. And now—well—” she went on, choking back the sobs, “it is a delight to me to know that my earnings have placed my brother Gilbert in the manual-training school, and are helping Margaret, Lizzette, and Antoine in numerous ways. I don’t want anything in this world, but just to grow into light and life with the dear ones I love and who love me.”
Mrs. Mason did an unprecedented thing for her. She clasped one of Elsie’s hands in her own, and said with a little break in her voice: “My dear child, you must promise to forget my severity, and take me at my word when I tell you to use the piano as often as you find the coast clear, and also to help yourself to what books you like in the library. I shall never speak a harsh word to you again.”
“Don’t say that,” exclaimed Elsie quickly. “I may need a good many.”
“Well, the compact stands until you do need them.”
Two hours later, having seen the carriage drive from the door, and supposing the house empty with the exception of James, who was dozing in his pantry off the dining-room, Elsie came softly down the stairs to the front drawing-room. She had taken off cap, kerchief, and apron, and wore only a dark cloth dress with a little knot of bright red silk at the throat. With childish curiosity she investigated everything in the handsome room, pausing longest before a Carrara marble statuette of Cupid and Psyche and talking aloud with all the abandon of a child.
“So that face of Psyche’s was the best the sculptor could do to represent the soul. I should call it rather the absence of soul; but then I’m a Philistine, and lack culture; and as for Cupid, if the blind god is no fairer than he is painted—I should say carved—he wouldn’t stand much chance of awaking immortality in me. I don’t believe I’ve got a bit of poetry in me, anyhow; I’m so inclined to laugh at sentiment, or sentimentality—it all amounts to the same thing. In either event, I suppose it shows that ‘Elsie the cook’ is made of coarser clay than those who find beauty in unmeaning faces. But I forget. ‘Elsie the cook’ has gone away, and Elsie the lady has come to stay.”
A low ripple of laughter broke from her lips over the unintentional couplet. “A poet, after all! I guess, as they say below stairs, I’ll throw up my job and get a quill and ink-stand.”
At this juncture, a gentleman who had been stretched at full length upon a couch within a curtained alcove at the further end of the library, closed the book he had been reading, and shoving the curtain aside for an inch or two, gazed into the drawing-room through the half-open door. It chanced that the wide pier-glass was so situated that nearly the whole interior of the drawing-room was visible to the occupant of the alcove, and a half-smile gleamed beneath the curled blonde mustache as he listened to Elsie’s amusing comments.