CHAPTER V—OLD MAIDS AND YOUNG
MONDAY morning broke. Such a cold, dismal, drizzly morning! The wind whistled and blew about the cottage, until Lilia suggested tying the clothes-line round the chimneys and fastening it to the strong pine-trees in front, for greater safety. It snowed at six o'clock, it hailed at seven, rained at eight, stopped at nine, and presently began to go through the same varied programme. After breakfast, Bell went to the window and stood dreamily flattening her nose against the pane, while the others busied themselves about their several tasks.
“Well, girls,” said she at length, “we've had four different kinds of weather this morning, so it may clear off after all, though I confess it doesn't look like it. It's too stormy to go anywhere, or for anybody to come to us, so we shall have to try violently in every possible way to amuse ourselves. I must run over to Miss Miranda's for the milk before it rains harder. Perhaps I shall stumble into some excitement on the way; who knows!”
So saying, she ran out, and in a few minutes appeared in the yard wrapped in a bright red water-proof, the hood pulled over her head, and framing her roguish, rosy face. In ten minutes she returned breathless from a race across the garden, and a vain attempt to keep her umbrella right side out. She entered the room in her usual breezy way, leaving the doors all open, and sank into a chair, with an expression of mysterious mirth in her eyes.
“Guess what's happened!” she asked, with sparkling eyes. “I have the most enormous, improbable, unguessable surprise for you; you never will think, and anyway I can't wait to tell, so here it is: We are all invited to tea this afternoon with Miss Miranda and Miss Jane! Isn't that 'ridikilis'?”
“Do tell, Isabel,” squeaked Jo, with a comically irreverent imitation of Miss Sawyer, “air you a-going to accept?”
“Oh, yes, Bell, we'd better go,” said Edith Lambert. “I should like to see the inside of that old house. I dare say we shall enjoy it, and it saves cooking.”
“We are remarkably favored,” laughed Bell. “I don't believe that anybody has been invited there since the Sewing Circle met with them three years ago. They live such a quiet, strange, lonely life! Their mother and father died when they were very young, more than thirty years ago. They were quite rich for the times, and left their daughters this big house all furnished and quantities of lovely old-fashioned dishes and pictures. All the rooms are locked, but I'll try and melt Miss Miranda's heart, and get her to show us some of her relics. Scarcely anything has been changed in all these years, except that they have bought a cooking-stove. Miss Jane hates new-fangled things, and is really ashamed of the stove, I think; as to having a sewing-machine, or an egg-beater, or a carpet-sweeper,—why, she would as soon think of changing the fashion of her bonnet! I believe there isn't such a curious house, nor another pair of such dried-up, half-nice, half-disagreeable people in the country. There's Emma Jane with the butter! I'll meet her at the back door, get her to peel some potatoes and apples, make her sew a white ruffle in her neck, and make some original remark.”
Bell's criticism of the Misses Sawyer and their home was quite just. The old brick house stood in a garden which, in the spring-time, was filled with odorous lilacs, blossoming apple-trees, and long rows of currant and gooseberry bushes. In the summer, too, there were actual groves of asparagus, gaudy sunflowers, bright hollyhocks, gay marigolds, royal flower-de-luce,—all respectable, old-fashioned posies, into whose hearts the humming-birds loved to thrust their dainty beaks and steal their sweetness. Then there were beds paved round with white clam-shells, where were growing trembling little bride's-tears, bachelor's-buttons, larkspur, and china pinks. No modern blossoms would Miss Miranda allow within these sacred ancient places, no begonias, gladioli, and “sech,” with their new-fangled, heathenish, unpronounceable names. The old flowers were good enough for her; and, certainly, they made a blooming spot about the dark house.