As the train from Bunker’s Mills met the boat from Ellenville, Mr. Bodger’s wife and Mr. Hackfeather’s mother arrived at the same time, and, sitting in the sunny reception room of the bungalow, glared at each other in chilly and silent hostility, while poor, innocent little Mrs. Wick, much troubled by their strange behavior, tried to talk to both of them at once, and rattled away in her embarrassment until she had talked a great deal more than she had meant to. She told them all the story of Beatrice Brighton Wick, and the will, and the hurried flight to Jericho, and at their surprise at finding Jericho Pond with its Summer and Winter colony so delightful a place that they hardly felt as if they could tear themselves away from it when the four years were up. And she told them that both she and Mr. Wick had thought it might be quite awkward for so newly married a couple to be traveling with a six month’s old baby, and that baby Mr. Wick’s aunt.
“But, do you know,” she said, “we must have been over-sensitive about it, for we never had the first least little bit of trouble. Indeed, the only mishap we had was the other way. The old woman who was in charge of the place here left us suddenly the first day without a word of warning. I couldn’t make out why she was dissatisfied, but my nurse, Nora, told me that she thought that Miss Hipsy thought that the baby was too young. Some people have such an objection to young babies, you know. However, it didn’t the least bit matter, for Nora turned out to be a very good cook, and I took the baby. I wanted to learn, you know.”
WHAT MRS. FORTESCUE DID.
IGHT in the rear of the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket, and cornerwise across the street, the Old Ladies’ Home of Aquawket sits on the topmost of a series of velvety green terraces. It is a quiet street; the noisiest thing in it, or rather over it, is the bell in the church steeple, and that is as deep toned and mellow as all church bells ought to be and few church bells are. As to the Old Ladies’ Home, itself, it looks like the veritable abode of peace. A great wistaria clambers over its dull brown stucco walls. Beds of old-fashioned flowers nod and sway in the chastened breezes on its two sunny sides, and thick clumps of lilacs and syringas shield it to the north and east. Dainty little dimity curtains flutter at the open windows all Summer long; and, whether it comes from the immaculately neat chambers of the old ladies, or from some of the old-fashioned flower beds, there is always, in warm weather, a faint smell of lavender floating down upon the breeze to the passer-by in the quiet street. You would never dream, to look at it, that the mad, inhuman, pitiless strife and fury of an Old Ladies’ Home raged ceaselessly, year after year, within those quiet walls.
Now suppose that every wasp in a certain wasp’s nest had an individual theology of its own, totally different from the theology of any other wasp, and that each one personally conducted his theology in the real earnest calvinistic spirit—you would call that wasp’s nest a pretty warm, lively, interesting domicile, would you not? Well, it would be a paradise of paralysis alongside of an Old Ladies’ Home. If you want to get at the original compound tincture of envy, malice and all uncharitableness, go to a nice, respectable Old Ladies’ Home with a list of “Lady Patronesses” as long as your arm, and get the genuine article in its most highly concentrated form.
There were eleven inmates of the ‘Old Ladies’ Home of Aquawket, besides the matron, the nurse, the cook, and a couple of “chore-girls.” These two last led a sort of life that came very near to qualifying them for admission to the institution on a basis of premature old age. Of the real old ladies in the home, every one of the eleven had a bitter and undying grievance against at least one, and, possibly, against ten of her companions, and the only thing that held the ten oldest of the band together was the burning scorn and hatred which they all felt for the youngest of the flock, Mrs. Williametta Fortescue, who signed what few letters she wrote “Willie,” and had been known to the world as “Billy” Fortescue when she sang in comic opera and wore pink tights.