It took Marcia six weeks to make Bodkin’s Millinery the most attractive hat store in the flourishing town of Bluffport. With the first money that the firm could spare, the entire front of the building got a second coat of paint and the interior both paint and paper. The one thing that surprised Nancy Bodkin and caused the townspeople a minute of wonder, was the fact that when the freshly painted sign went up, it was an exact duplicate of the old one. Said Nancy: “Now that sign must have your name on it, too, and from the start we must share equally in the profits. It’s a sure thing that all the work you are doing and the wonderful way you can sell things, is worth as much to me as the use of the building is to you.”
But Marcia said authoritatively that she thought the best thing to do was merely to go on using the old sign, with which people were familiar. She had noticed that human nature was so perverse and contrary that it did not take kindly to changes. She thought the sign had much better be left merely “Bodkin Millinery.”
Marcia had her surprise, equally as great, from an entirely different source. It had two ramifications. For days, at each opening of the door, her eyes had turned toward it, while fear gripped her heart, but as time went on and she neither saw nor heard from Martin Moreland, she concluded that she had been right in her surmise. He was as sick of his part of their bad bargain as she had become of hers; he was probably as glad to give freedom to her as she had been to accept it.
The other thing which amazed Marcia unspeakably was the fact that she was deriving intense enjoyment from the life she was living. There had been no sufficient reason why she should not go occasionally to the church services that Nancy attended. It seemed ungracious to refuse. It was good business to go. Adroitly Nancy adduced reasons as to why it would be better economy to run into a mite society or a church supper for a meal than to take of their time to prepare their own food, while they were benefiting the church and charity organizations as well. On these occasions she made a point of introducing Marcia to every man and woman with whom she was acquainted—and her years of business in the village had made her acquainted with every soul who homed there and hundreds from the country as well. Presently, Marcia found herself stopping for a minute at the bank to say a word about the weather or political conditions; occasionally business men dropped in to solicit a subscription to some enterprise the town had undertaken. In a short time, Marcia was feeling thoroughly at home. She was really enjoying the life she was living. She was interested in the people she was meeting; she was truly concerned about what they were doing. In her heart she knew that she was delighted to return to church as she had gone in her girlhood. One point she made definite in her mind and kept scrupulously. She never opened her lips to ask a question or to take the slightest interest in anything that might have been related to the life of Nancy Bodkin previous to their arrangement of their partnership. Naturally, she set the same seal upon Nancy’s lips that she wore upon her own.
Nancy, frail in body and in parts of her brain, was surprisingly strong in others. In the back of her head she knew that when a woman of Marcia’s appearance and ability walked into such a shop as she had been keeping, and regenerated it and straightened the business into a hopeful concern in a few weeks’ time, she was not an ordinary woman; she had reasons of her own for being where she was and doing what she did. But the results were so gratifying to Nancy Bodkin that she shut her lips tight and drove her capable needle through flower stems, folded velvet, and buckram with precision and force. She said to her heart: “I don’t care where she came from. I don’t care who she is. I don’t care what any one thinks about her. She’s awful pretty. She’s smart as a whip. She’s clean as a ribbon, and what’s it of my business, or any one else’s except her own, as to why she’s here? I am good and thankful to have her, and there had better not any one poke around and hurt her feelings or they’ll get a piece of my mind. The present and the Golden Egg are good enough for me.”
That night Marcia capped the climax that she had reached in Nancy Bodkin’s heart by a masterly stroke. In the privacy of their mutual room, after the store was closed for the day, she washed Nancy’s hair, dried and brushed it to silkiness. The following morning she curled it and laid it in becoming waves and braids upon her well-shaped head. She applied some of the powder that she used upon her own nose to the nose of Nancy Bodkin, and performed a sleight-of-hand miracle upon her lips and cheeks. When Nancy looked into her mirror, she did not know herself. She did not ever want to know herself again as she had been. She was so perfectly delighted with what she saw within her grasp by a few months of work, that she had no words in which to express her feeling. The next thing she knew, Marcia came into the store with a piece of goods that she cut up, and in spare time, fashioned into a most attractive dress for Nancy.
That did settle the matter. Marcia might talk if she wanted to talk; she might keep her mouth shut if she so desired. It was patent that she was perfectly capable, honest, and attractive in appearance. Very shortly Nancy Bodkin worshipped her as she never had worshipped any human being in all her life. These feelings broadened and deepened because she realized, whenever she walked abroad attractively clothed and with all of her best points pronouncedly intensified, that people showed her a deference and a kindliness that she never before had experienced. In a bewildered way, Nancy slowly figured out the situation. If she had spent a small share of the time on herself that she had been accustomed to spending on hats for her townspeople, a larger share of their respect would have been bestowed upon her. It was a new viewpoint for Nancy. She had been thinking that she might earn the highest esteem by spending herself upon her profession to the exclusion of everything else, and now she was forced to learn, by overwhelming evidence, that the degree of respect she received from the village was going to depend very largely upon the height of the degree to which she respected herself.
CHAPTER VII
“Field Mice Among the Wheat”
It is a truism that time is fleeting, while never does it flee on such rapid feet as during school days. When Mahala became convinced that it might be best for Jason’s self-respect and for his chances in life not to attempt further attendance in a school subjected to the cruelties of Martin Moreland, she undertook, in her own way, to superintend his education.