“What day of the month is this—the thirteenth?” he asked, as his eye fell on the date-line of his newspaper, served with his coffee.
“Yes; to-morrow is the day for us to dine with the Robesons,” said his wife.
“To-morrow is the day for our niece to arrive,” retorted Mr. Graham. “Don’t forget to have her met, in case it slips my memory to-morrow when Henry drives me down.”
“Our niece! Arrives! What can you mean?” cried Mrs. Graham, in shrill surprise, as she dropped her fork with a clatter which would have called down a reprimand on Jerry.
“I told you, didn’t I?” asked Mr. Graham, with an uneasy recollection that he had not mentioned the matter, having a cowardly doubt as to how his tidings would be received. “It’s my sister’s little girl—my sister Jennie, you know, who married and settled out west in Crescendo. Jennie’s husband has made her very happy—he’s a first-rate fellow—but he hasn’t made her, nor any one else, including himself, rich. I imagine they have to scramble along on rather slender provision for a large brood; they have a big family. I don’t hear from Jennie very often, and she never complains, but her last letter—it came nearly two months ago—had a tone of sadness, and betrayed more than she realized of anxiety. I answered it, and I told her to send her oldest girl—Joan—Jane—no, Janet—Janet on here to us to go to school with our girls this winter. She’s about Gwen and Gladys’s age. She won’t be any trouble to us, and I fancy it will be considerable help to her mother. So Jennie’s husband wrote me that the child would come, and she’ll be here to-morrow.”
Gwendoline, the oldest girl, who was fifteen; Gladys, the second one, who was thirteen; seven-year-old Genevieve, and Ivan, a boy of nearly eleven, stared at each other and at their parents in dumb amazement. Mrs. Graham flushed with annoyance; only the presence of the waitress and little Geraldine’s despised custodian restrained her from expressing that annoyance forcibly. As it was, she said: “I can not understand, Mr. Graham, how you could have added the care of another child to me, who have six of my own to look after, without so much as consulting me in the matter!”
“But you don’t look after us, mamma,” said Ivan, quite cheerfully, and with no idea of complaining. “You are too busy with all your committees and teas and clubs and things. So she won’t be any bother, and maybe she’ll be nice.” Ivan—who despised his Russian name, and had succeeded in compelling his family to call him Jack as soon as he had learned the names were equivalent to each other—was a warm-hearted, hot-tempered, honest little fellow, who did not seem to belong to the city splendors. “Jack had reverted,” his father said, “to his ancestral stock”; one could easily imagine him happily driving cows on his grandfather’s farm among the New Hampshire hills.
“I admit, my dear, that it was not quite fair to spring this little girl on you, as Jack would say, but I think the boy takes the true view of it. One girl more or less will not matter in a family like this one, and all the difference she will make will be a third bill to me for tuition at Miss Larned’s school,” said Mr. Graham, trying to speak with an assurance he did not feel.
“But to us, papa!” cried Gladys, reproachfully. “It will mean more than that to us. Gwen and I will have to introduce her to the girls; she will expect to go about with us, and just fancy a poor girl from a little Western town in our set!”
Gwendoline—Mrs. Graham had had the happy thought of naming all her daughters with the same initial, repeating that of their family name—Gwendoline laughed scornfully at her sister’s remark. “I believe I should rather enjoy livening up those girls,” she said. “I honestly don’t see how she could have worse manners than some of them if she came off an Indian reservation. You know, I just despise those silly, giggling, affected girls, with their grown-up nonsense. They’re not all like that, though. But then the nice ones would understand and make allowance for her being a girl from a little town—nice people always understand, I’ve noticed that. But what I think is she’ll be a nuisance around the house. Goodness knows, I don’t want one single person more to make a noise and get under foot when I want to do things!”