“Color!” sez I.
“Yes,” sez she, “what color would you have for the awnings and trimmings for the big tent where I am to receive? I myself should prefer pink as more becoming to my complexion. Medora wants pale-blue on account of her hair, which she has just dyed a golden color. But Mrs. La Flamme, at her great charity ball, had blue awnings and draperies, and I wouldn’t for the world have her think I copied her or was lacking in originality—what do you think of a delicate shell pink?”
I riz up with a real lot of dignity, and, as I glanced down, I see one of her danglers sot there in a stylish carriage, waiting for her, evidently.
So I sez, “Don’t let me hender you any longer; Josiah will be here in a few minutes, and I have got some bizness of my own to tend to before I go.” I did want to see the landlord about some jars of butter I had sold him, he had made a mistake about sendin’ home the jars. So she went downstairs on that side of the buildin’, and I swep’ through the hall with a sight of dignity, and didn’t finish sweepin’ till I swep over some playthings of Algernon’s, and he swore at me till I got to the bottom of the stairs.
Well, the landlord promised to send home my jars, and I went out on the lower piazza, which wuz most deserted at this hour, and pretty soon Angenora come and found me there. She had got sick of playin’ with Algernon, she said, and, as we sot there, we could hear him swearin’ at his nurse and tearin’ at the cat’s tail. And the cat’s yells of distress and the nurse’s coarse rebukes all come mellowed by the distance, and she leaned up aginst me and we had a good little visit. She knew me quite well, for she had been to our house a number of times, and I had seen her at Thomas J.’s when she’d been there to play with the children.
She wuz a affectionate little thing, or she wouldn’t have worried so over Jimmy De Graffe. Her eyes wuz big and black and solemn lookin’, and her hair curled in little short black curls all over her head, her complexion wuz white and clear, and she looked wan. But I believe it wuz what she had had gin her that made her look so, as well as her late hours and fashionable flirtations. But she wuz very handsome, and I didn’t wonder so much what I had always heard, that of all her children Miss Greene Smythe loved this one best, and wuz proudest of her and bound to have her shine in society even at the age of nine, poor little thing! I don’t doubt but what her Ma loved her, but it wuz a love so covered up and hid underneath fashion and frivolity and show that I thought to myself it might jest about as well not been there at all for all the good it did her.
Though they say Miss Greene Smythe did once in a while, when she had a few minutes’ reprieve from her life work of show and sham, pet little Angenora, and tell her how she loved her, and that she wuz the only comfort of her Ma’s hard, toilsome life. Love begets love, and that is why, I spoze, little Angenora wuz the only livin’ thing on earth that really loved Miss Greene Smythe, she did love her fondly.
She wuz a tender-hearted child, anyway, and had to love somethin’, and wanted to be mothered, wanted to dretfully, but, seein’ her mother wuz engaged in her labor of fashionable display, she didn’t git mothered at all, and that gin her the wistful, longin’ look in her eyes, that and her late hours and the stuff her nurse gin her. And she had a sort of pitiful, skairful look in her eyes, and that come, I found out, from her nurse skairin’ her nights ever sence she wuz a baby to make her lay still, tellin’ her that somebody would jump at her, or that there wuz great green eyes lookin’ out at her from different places, and there wuz wicked men ready to appear to her, and ghosts and everything, and as the nurse had always told her that she would eat her up alive, if she told anything about it, why, it had gin her a dretful subdued look and afraid to say her little soul wuz her own. But I spoze the deep, silent, constant love of this little thing wuz a rock of support for her Ma to think on in her fashionable career, I spoze so.
Well, I put my arm round her, and she laid her little cheek up aginst me real confidin’ and sweet, and I told her stories and mothered her jest as well as I could till my Josiah appeared drivin’ up the long avenoo with the mair and colt. And I told her to have her Ma let her come down and stay a week with us, and she brightened up real bright and said she would.
Josiah had made the dicker, so he told me, as we drove home, and had swapped five hundred feet of spruce lumber for white fish put down in sweet pickle. And I sez, “For mercy sake! what do you want of so many fish!”