She was a thin, plain, elderly woman, with a very low voice and a deceptive appearance of meekness. The casual guest at Mr. Ladd's board might have taken her for a silent saint, who, unwillingly sojourning in this vale of tears, was waiting with ladylike impatience for a heavenly crown. In some ways this description would have fitted Aunt Henrietta well enough, though it took no account of a perverse and interfering nature that was more than trying to live with. The silent saint attempted to rule her brother and her niece with a rod of iron, and so far succeeded that her two years "tenure of the gubernatorial chair" (as Mr. Ladd bitterly called it), was fraught with quarrels and unhappiness. Her tyranny, like all tyrannies, ended in a revolution. Mr. Ladd brought his "unmarried misery"--also his own phrase--to a sharp conclusion, and Henrietta departed with a large check and a still larger ill-will.
"Phyllis," he said, "I guess we'll just have to rustle along by our poor little selves. The people who take charge of us seem to take charge too hard. They mean well, but why should they stamp on us?--Yes, let's try it ourselves."
And Phyllis, not quite fifteen years old, became the acknowledged mistress of the big house.
In her demure head she knew that to fail would be to incur a danger that was almost too terrible to contemplate. Her father might be persuaded into marrying again, and the thought of such a catastrophe sobered and restrained her. She was on her mettle, and was determined to succeed. She had her check-book, her desk, her receipted bills. She had her morning interviews with the cook; sent curtains to the cleaners; rang up various tradespeople on the telephone; gently criticized Mary's window-cleaning, and George's nails, and busied herself with these, and innumerable other little cares, while Miss Simpkins waited in the study, restlessly drumming her long, lean fingers on a French grammar.
Of course, she did several foolish, impulsive things, but no more than some little bride might have done in the first novelty of controlling a large household. She gave a tramp one of her father's best suits of clothes; she was prevailed upon by the servants to buy many things that neither they nor anybody else could possibly need--including an electrically driven knife-cleaner, and a cook's table, so compact and ingenious, that it would have been priceless on an airship, though in her own spacious kitchen it was decidedly out of place; and it took her several months to discover that James was apparently feeding five elephants instead of five horses.
But she was quick to learn better; and with the innate capacity she inherited from her father, she soon had everything running on oiled wheels. And all this, if you please, at fifteen, with quite a bit of stocking between her dress and her trimly-shod feet.
It was seldom that her father ever ventured into the realm of criticism; but once or twice, in his smiling, easy-going way, he gently pulled her up.
"I don't know much about these things," he remarked once, "but don't there seem to be a lot of new dresses in this family?"
"One can't go naked, Papa."
"Admitting that, my dear, which with people of our position would certainly give rise to comment--couldn't we compromise on--well--going half-naked, and perhaps show a more Spartan spirit, besides, in regard to our hats?"