This was on one of Jessica’s brief visits to Granny Briggs’s “apartment.” The girl had been corrected for speaking of “flat.” Miss Montaigne who had accompanied her special charge was reading a book she had brought with her in the tiny front room, called the “parlor” by the proud mistress of the little establishment. In fact, she disliked her own present, enforced surveillance of the trustworthy girl, who had grown up under the faithful care of the old frontiersman; but Madame’s rules were inflexible. Her young ladies must be attended during such calls by some employee of her own.
Jessica suddenly remembered the young lady in the parlor and pushed aside the plate of Indian pudding which had been part of Granny’s “New England dinner.”
“Oh! dear! I suppose I must go now. Dear Ephy, do stop that angry tramping up and down! The little dining-room isn’t big enough for such a great old fellow as you to go ‘rampagin’ in. We’re going to school, both of us, aren’t we? But, have patience, we’ll graduate sometime—with honors or without them, who knows? And then we’ll go home.”
“You believe we will! Why, ‘Little Captain,’ I’m saving up again’ it already. It shan’t cost anybody but Ephraim Marsh, one single cent for all this coming and going, these betwixts and betweens, and all the whole enduring business of living in New York till we get graddyated. Shucks! What’s Sophia Badger doing now?”
What, indeed! Could that hospitable creature, who had neither hesitated nor been ashamed once to offer her last slice of bread to a chance visitor, could she do less than hunt out her one plate which had a trifle of decoration about it, and heaping it with the really delicious pudding carry it into her parlor for Miss Montaigne’s delectation?
Ephraim was aghast. He was more afraid of the prim little “special” than even of the Madame herself, for the younger woman wore “glasses” that magnified the eyes behind them into something really formidable. Besides, however she might lay aside austerity when with her pupil, she assumed the most dignified of manners when abroad.
That is, she had done so, heretofore. But Granny Briggs—even the rule-encased schoolma’am could not withstand her appealing face, encircled by its flapping cap-ruffle; and with an apparent delight she graciously accepted the pudding, murmuring her most correct “Thank you.”
In another moment the delight had ceased to be apparent and had become real. One mouthful of the “tasty” dessert proved that this was something quite out of the common, and the pretty plate was not returned to Granny till it was empty.
“O Mrs. Briggs! That was so kind of you. Your dainty has carried me back to the time when I went visiting my own grandmother in your New England, and her big kitchen with all its good things. I have enjoyed it more than anything I have eaten for a long, long time.”
This was a trivial matter in itself; but it was not trivial in its results. Thereafter Miss Montaigne threw all her influence to bear in giving Jessica more frequent chances to meet her “humble friends,” as Madame called them; and now and then to let her meet them as Ephraim had desired, under his escort to and fro.