"You had to explain who a Talltowers is?" I said with mock amazement. It's delightful to poke fun at Jessie; she always appreciates a jest by taking it more seriously than an ordinary statement of fact.
"But, dear, you mustn't be offended. You know Mrs. Burke is very common and ignorant. She doesn't know the first thing about the world. She said to me the other day that she had often heard there were such things as class distinctions, but had never believed it until she came to Washington—she had thought it was like the fairy stories. She never was farther east than Chicago until this fall. She went there to the Fair. You must get her to tell you how she and three other women who belong to the same Chautauqua Circle went on together and slept in the same room and walked from dawn till dark every day, catalogue in hand, for eleven days. It's too pathetic. She said, 'My! but my feet were sore. I thought I was a cripple for life.'"
"That sounds nice and friendly," said I, suspicious that Jessie's quaint sense of humor had not permitted her to appreciate Mrs. Burke. "I'm so dreadfully afraid I'll fall into the clutches of people that'll try to—to humiliate me."
Tears sprang to Jessie's eyes. "Please don't, Gus!" she pleaded. "They'll be only too deferential. And you must keep them so. I suspect that Mrs. Burke chums with her servants."
We were stopping before the house—the big, splendid Ralston Castle, as they call it; one of the very finest of the houses that have been building since rich men began to buy into the Senate and Cabinet and aspire for diplomatic places, and so have attracted other rich families to Washington. What a changed Washington it is, and what a fight the old simplicity is making against the new ostentation! The sight of the Ralston Castle in my present circumstances depressed me horribly. I went to my second ball there, and it was given for me by Mrs. Ralston. And only a little more than a year ago I danced in the quadrille of honor with the French Ambassador—and the next week the Ralstons went smash and hurried abroad to hide, all except the old man who is hanging round Wall Street, they say, trying to get on his feet with the aid of his friends. Friends! How that word must burn into him every time he thinks of it. When he got into a tight place his "friends" took advantage of their knowledge of his affairs to grab his best securities, they say. No doubt he was disagreeable in a way, but still those who turned on him the most savagely had been intimate with him and had accepted his hospitality.
"You'll be mistress here," Jessie was saying. She had put on her prophetic look and pose—she really believes she has second sight at certain times. "And you'll marry the son, if you manage it right. I counted him in when I was going over the advantages and disadvantages of the place before proposing it to you. He looks like a mild, nice young man—though I must say I don't fancy cowlicks right in the part of the hair. I saw only his picture."
A tall footman with an insolent face opened the door and ushered us into the small drawing-room to the left: "Mrs. Carteret! Miss Talltowers!" he shouted—far louder than is customary or courteous. I saw the impudent grin in his eyes—no proper man-servant ever permits any one to see his eyes. And he almost dropped the curtain in our faces, in such haste was he to get back to his lounging-place below stairs.
His roar had lifted to her feet an elderly woman with her hair so badly dyed that it made her features look haggard and harsh and even dissipated. She made a nervous bow. She was of the figure called stout by the charitable and sumptuous by the crude. She was richly-dressed, over-dressed, dressed-up—shiny figured satin with a great deal of beads and lace that added to her width and subtracted from her height. She stood miserable, jammed and crammed into a tight corset. Her hands—very nice hands, I noticed—were folded upon her stomach. As soon as I got used to that revolting hair-dye, I saw that she had in fact a large-featured, sweet face with fine brown eyes. Even with the dye she was the kind of looking woman that it sounds perfectly natural to hear her husband call "mother."
Jessie went up to her as she stood wretched in her pitiful attempt at youth and her grandeur of clothes and surroundings. Mrs. Burke looked down kindly, with a sudden quizzical smile that reminded me of my suspicions as to the Chicago Fair story. Jessie was looking up like a plump, pretty, tame robin, head on one side. "Dear Mrs. Burke," she said. "This is Miss Talltowers, and I'm sure you'll love each other."
Mrs. Burke looked at me—I thought, with a determined attempt to be suspicious and cautious. I'm afraid Jessie's reputation for tireless effort to do something for everybody has finally "queered" her recommendations. However, whatever warning Mrs. Burke had received went for nothing. She was no match for Jessie—Jessie from whom his Majesty at the White House hides when he knows she's coming for an impossible favor—she was no match for Jessie and she knew it. She wiped the sweat from her face and stammered: "I hope we'll suit each other, Miss—" In her embarrassment she had forgotten my name.