“Well, we will have an early supper, so you can get off. Mercy, child! Did you break one o’ them glass labels? How often ’v’ I told you not to press on ’em so hard? What one is it? The tincture cantharides! Well, tie a string around it, so we’ll know what it is. There ain’t no label on the aconite bottle, nor the Jamaica ginger either—an’ them settin’ side by side, too. I hate guessin’ at things in a drug-store—specially when one’s a poison. Have you scoured up them spatulas?”
“Yes’m.”
“Well, I’ll go in an’ do up the dishes, an’ leave you to ’tend store. Don’t forget to make Mr. Benson’s pills.”
But Mr. Benson’s pills were not made right away. When her mother was gone, Mariella got down from the step-ladder and leaned one elbow on the show-case and rested her chin in her hand. Her throat swelled in and out fitfully, and the blue veins showed, large and full, on her temples. For a long time she stood thus, twisting the towel in her hand and looking at the fires on the hill without seeing them. Some of their dry burning seemed to get into her own eyes.
Mr. Grover, passing, glanced in.
“Mariella,” he said, putting one foot across the threshold, “are you goin’ to the canoe races?”
The girl had darted erect instantly, and put on a look of coquettish indifference.
“Yes, I am.” Her eyes flashed at him over her shoulder from the corners of their lids as she started back to the prescription-case. “I’m goin’ with Charlie Walton!”
When Mariella had gone to the races that night, and customers were few and far between, Mr. Grover walked with a determined air through Mrs. Mansfield’s store and, pushing aside the crimson canton-flannel portieres, entered her cheerful sitting-room. On the floor was a Brussels carpet, large-flowered and vivid. A sewing-machine stood in one corner and Mariella’s organ in another. The two narrow windows overlooking the sound were gay with blooming geraniums and white curtains tied with red ribbons. There was a trunk deceptively stuffed and cretonned into the semblance of a settee; and there was a wicker-chair that was full of rasping, aggravating noises when you rocked in it. It had red ribbon twisted through its back and arms. Mrs. Mansfield was sitting in it now, reading a novel, and the chair was complaining unceasingly.
Mr. Grover sat down on the trunk.