Doris sat in the corner studying. Betty had gone over to Mme. Sheafe's to make sure she had her lace stitch just right. They had been ironing and baking all the morning, and now Mrs. Leverett had attacked her pile of shirts, when Mrs. Morse came in. She had her work as well. Everybody took work, for neighborly calls were an hour or two long.
Doris had been presented first, a kind of attention paid to her because she was from across the ocean. Everybody's health had been inquired about.
"I came over on a real errand," began Mrs. Morse presently. "And you mustn't make excuses. My Jane is going to have a little company week from Thursday night. She will be seventeen, and we are going to have seventeen young people. The girls will come in the afternoon, and the young men at seven to tea. Then they will have a little merrymaking. And we want Warren and Betty. We are going to ask those we want the most first, and if so happen anything serious stands in the way, we'll take the next row."
"You're very kind, I'm sure. Warren does go out among young people, but I don't know about Betty. She's so young."
"Well, she will have to start sometime. My mother was married at sixteen, but that is too young to begin life, though she never regretted it, and she had a baker's dozen of children."
"I'm not in any hurry about Betty. She is the last girl home. And the others were past nineteen when they were married."
"We feel there is no hurry about Jane. But I've had a happy life, and all six of us girls were married. Not an old maid among us."
"Old maids do come in handy oftentimes," subjoined Mrs. Leverett.
Yet in those days every mother secretly, often openly, counted on her girls being married. The single woman had no such meed of respect paid her as the "bachelor maids" of to-day. She often went out as housekeeper in a widower's family, and took him and his children for the sake of having a home of her own. Still, there were some fine unmarried women.
"Yes, they're handy in sickness and times when work presses, but they do get queer and opinionated from having their own way, I suppose."