“Do you really mean,” she said, “that you don’t know Mark Tapley? Why, he’s one of Dickens’ characters.”
“Well, you see,” said Patty, “I never read but three of Dickens’ books, and he wasn’t in those. What did he do?”
“Why, he’s a character in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’; and he’s a man who was always jolly under any circumstances. The more depressing the situation, the jollier he grew. He said it was no credit to anybody to be jolly when everything went right; the great feat was to be jolly when things went wrong.”
“I like him,” said Patty, decidedly; “he was a true Grig; and I’d like to know more of him. I’ll tell you what, girls, some time let’s read about him aloud at one of our meetings.”
“Yes, we will,” agreed Hilda; “but I say, Patty, I think your performance with Miss Dennison was fine. If you could make that sour-visaged spinster laugh, you needn’t ever be afraid to tackle anybody. Now, Flossy, you come next. What have you been up to this week?”
“My experience isn’t as interesting as Patty’s,” said Flossy; “I tried it on Grandpa. He lives with us, you know, and he has the gout. Sometimes it’s worse than others, and this week he had an awful attack, and, jiminy crickets, if he wasn’t cross! Now, generally when he gets rampageous I just keep out of the way; but this time I thought I’d play Grig. So I staid around, and when he burst forth in his angry tantrums I just laughed and said some foolish, funny thing that had nothing to do with the case. I read up the comic papers to get jokes to spring on him, and once or twice I read him funny stories out of the magazines. It didn’t always succeed, but lots of times I did get him into a better temper, and once he said I made him forget the pain entirely.”
“That’s a very nice experience, Flossy, and I think you were lovely,” said Clementine, in her impulsive way; “I really believe our society is going to do good in the world as well as other missionaries. Now I’ll tell what I did. There’s nobody in our house that’s cross, except the cook; and she is a terror. Why, positively, mamma doesn’t dare cross her the least bit. She’s not only quick-tempered and has a habit of flying into fearful rages, but she’s sullen and ill-natured right along. Well, a few nights ago mamma was giving a dinner-party and she wanted awfully to give Nora some directions how to do some things. But she knew Nora wanted to do them another way, and she just didn’t dare tell her to change.”
“I wouldn’t have such a cook as that!” exclaimed Adelaide, indignantly.
“Yes, you would,” said Clementine, “if she was perfect every other way. Mamma puts up with her temper because she’s such a good servant. Well, anyhow, I went down into the kitchen that morning and cracked a few jokes with Nora, and she has the real Irish sense of humour, so I got her laughing until she was for the time being in a good-natured, amiable frame of mind. Then I ran upstairs and told mamma that if she went down quick, before the effects wore off, I believed she could make Nora do anything she wanted her to. And, sure enough, Nora was still smiling when mamma went down, and she took the orders as meek as a lamb, and mamma was so pleased.”
“You’re all right, Clementine,” said Editha; “but you see we’ve lived in The Wilberforce and we don’t have any servants of our own, and of course we can’t joke and giggle with the hotel servants. So Adelaide and I thought we’d try it on Jeannette, because she certainly is a cross child. And then somehow that seemed sort of mean, for quite often Adelaide and I are cross, too. We don’t mean anything, but we just snip each other, and the other snaps back, and it isn’t very nice. So all three of us decided to jolly each other, and now whenever one of us says anything cross, the other two begin to giggle, and first thing we know we’re all laughing.”