There was coming to be quite a circle of what was considered afterward "the first people," and who had streets named for them. There were the Newberrys and Owenses, the Hamiltons and Pecks and Roberts, the Menards and Nobles, and Baubeins and Kinzies, who seemed the fathers of the town, and talked of the block house and the few cabins around it, the attack on the fort, and the Indian skirmishes. When you listened to them Chicago seemed really old.
Then there was only one set, with the clergymen having the place of honor. Now there were several circles, not strongly defined, and living in amity, but each one choosing its own friends. The cream went out shopping when the new goods came in, and no longer wore homespun. Their sons and daughters went away for the finishing touches in education.
The Haynes were then in what we should call the middle class. There were some fine French people, but they seemed a little colony to themselves, as well as the Germans. I liked all the French people I had met very much, perhaps I was drawn to them by the thought of Norman in Paris. I did admire their courtesy and a certain dainty politeness as if they always knew just the right thing to do, and did it graciously.
Mrs. Piaget brought out her best cake and wine. She had some fine embroidered napkins, others done in exquisite drawn work, and her glasses were clear and fine, letting the tint of the wine shine through. And the cake was delicious. She always flavored it. She had the art of making flavors and scents, and their clothing had an indescribable fragrance.
"Well, well," Mrs. Hayne said, when we had left the house, "that's done with, and I've been dreading it. Sophie will make a nice wife, I dare say, but I think Homer could have found some good American girl. There's Kate and Annie Noble. They always ask him to their gatherings, and Mr. Noble said to father that he was a smart, level-headed fellow, and would make his mark. I've been counting on my boys marrying, and I've wanted some one I could company with and feel to like as an own daughter."
"But Sophie is very sweet and affectionate," I ventured.
"She's French. The old saying is that 'blood's thicker 'n water.' And she'll have her ways, and her friends, and they'll jabber that everlasting tongue that you can't make head nor tail of until you wish there hadn't been any Tower of Babel, and everybody had gone on talking the same language."
I laughed at that. How queer it must have seemed when no one understood any one else!
"And I s'pose Norman will come home with some fine French body who can't comb her hair nor put on her stockings nor shoes, and must have a maid, as old Granny Verrinder talks about. What better off is she for all the fuss! Granny Pettingill is eighty, and she can spin on the big wheel, and knit and sew, and is worth a dozen of that other old thing, that's wearing out her daughter's life. I don't know what you'd do with a dozen. I'd bundle 'em up in a bag an' drop 'em in the lake."
Mother Hayne was forgetting Ben's training, and dropping back into her elisions, which showed that she was rather short in the temper.