MAUD S. lengthened her measured tread an infinitesimally small distance, in response to the doctor’s impatient command. But she did it sorrowfully, and with the air of yielding to a child’s whim. Maud S. had been born and brought up in Auburn, and she had been educated to a stern sense of the proprieties. It was right and proper to forego appearances, and even to abandon one’s dignity, if necessary, upon a call of mercy; but a trip to the station, with a trunk aboard, and a feeble passenger inside, certainly ought to be made decently and in order. Moreover, it was the first outing that Mrs. Grafton had taken for eight years, and the occasion was one that required proper observance. To be told to “Chirk up, Maud,” right in front of Banker Willowby’s house, was certainly irritating, and her excessive good-breeding showed in the forbearance with which she received the admonition. Maud S. made up in refinement and courtesy what she lacked in speed, and she showed her delicacy, even in her resentment, by the ladylike way in which she flapped her ears forward, in order that she might not hear the domestic conversation that was going on in the carriage behind her.
“I feel like a deserter from the regiment,” sighed Mrs. Grafton. “I ought not to be going away from home.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say it,” responded the doctor, “but you certainly ought to be getting away from home just as fast as the train will carry you,—and Maud S. will condescend to take you to it. I can’t get you out of Auburn too soon.”
“It is wicked of me to leave the house and the children.”
“It would be wicked of me not to make you leave the house and the children! You have had an undisturbed diet of house and children four years too long. No wonder your heart rebels. A fine kind of doctor I am, not to have detected this long ago! If it had been any patient but my wife, I should have been quick to discover it. But it’s partly your own fault, Elizabeth; you had no business to be so uncomplaining about yourself. Even that excuse, though, doesn’t keep me from realizing how brutally thoughtless I have been.”
The mother-mind went back to the forlorn little group on the porch. “Poor children,” she sighed; “I don’t know how they are going to get along; if they only had some one to rely upon for their three meals a day! But Ellen is woefully inefficient, and she has to be handled with sugar-tongs, besides. The spring sewing isn’t finished yet; the porch ought to be screened; David—poor little pale face—ought to be sent away before his hay fever begins; and the fruit-canning season is just at hand.”
“Oh, we’ll get along,” assured the doctor, in the old, illogical way that means nothing, and yet is so comforting to a woman; “Barbara’s young and strong, and full of energy. She’ll put her hand to the helm, if need be.”
“But this is her vacation, and I want her to enjoy it. She’s worked hard at her books for four years. Besides, she is so full of her writing now—”
Dr. Grafton laughed,—a merry, contagious laugh, that rivaled his medical skill in winning his patients. “I thought as much,” he said. “Getting admission to her room nowadays is attended with all the formalities of the Masonic ritual, and she goes about with ink on her fingers and ink on her nose. I suppose she is fired by the ambition of the Banbury Cross lady in making ‘music wherever she goes.’ Poor little Barbara; she’s taking herself so very seriously, these days! She feels that she must gush forth a stream of living water for thirsty mankind, forgetting, dear little lass, that she is not a spring yet, but only a rain-barrel. Four years of college have filled her, but she doesn’t realize that now is the time to keep all the bung-holes shut. I suppose we must all pass through that think-we-are-artists disease, but Barbara seems to have an aggravated case.”
“She has been encouraged in it a good deal.”