A Daughter of the Rich

by Mary E. Waller

In all these migrations Hazel accompanied her parents; in fact, was moved about as so much goods and chattels, from New York to the Berkshires, from the Berkshires to Malta, from Malta to the Great Smokies, from the mountains to the sea; her appurtenances, the governess and French maid, went with her; and the routine of her home in New York, the study, the promenade, the all-alone breakfasts and dinners went on with the regularity of clockwork, whether on the yacht, in the mountains, or in the villa on the Cliff.

So now, although she wished her father would stay and entertain her, it never occurred to her to tell him so; and likewise it never occurred to the father that his child needed or wished him to stay. Nor had it ever occurred to the young mother that she was not doing her whole duty by her child; for she never omitted to go upstairs and kiss her little daughter good-night, whether the child was awake or asleep, before going out to dinner, theatre, or reception.

She died when Hazel was nine, and it was a lovely memory of "mamma" that Hazel cherished: a vision of loveliness in trailing white silk, or velvet, or lace,--her mother always wore white, it was her Southern inheritance,--with a single dark-red rose among the folds of Venetian point of the bertha; always a gleam of white neck and arms banded with flashing, many-faceted diamonds, or roped with pearls; always a sense of delicious white warmth and fragrance, as the vision bent over her and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. And if, in her bliss, she opened her sleepy eyes, she looked always into laughing brown depths, and putting up her hand caressed shining masses of brown hair.

But it was always a good-night vision. In the morning mamma did not breakfast until ten, and Hazel was off to the little private school at half-past nine. At noon mamma was either out at lunch or giving a lunch-party; and in the afternoon there was the promenade in the Park with the governess, and sometimes, as a treat, a drive with mamma on her round of calls, when Hazel and the maid sat among the furs in the carriage. Then Hazel played at being grown up, and longed for the time when she could wear a reception dress like mamma's, of white broadcloth and sable, and trip up the steps of the various houses, and trip down again with a bevy of young girls laughing and chatting so merrily.

All that had ceased when Hazel was nine, and the young father had made her mistress in her mother's place. It was such a great house! and there were so many servants! and the housekeeper was so strict! and it was so queer to sit at the round table in the big dining-room and try to look at papa over the silver épergne in the centre!

When she was eleven, she entered one of the large private schools which many of her little mates attended. Soon it came to be the "girls of our set" with Hazel; and then there followed music-lessons, and violin-lessons, and riding-lessons, and dancing-class, and riding-days in the Park, and lunch-parties with the girls, and theatre-matinée-parties, and concerts at Carnegie Hall, and birthday parties, and sales--school and drawing-room affairs--and Lenten sewing-classes; until gradually her little society life had become an epitome of her mother's, and when she began to shoot up like a bean-sprout, lose her round face and the delicate pink from her cheeks, uncles and aunt and cousin and friends whispered of her mother's frail constitution, and that it was time to take heed.

Then it was that the physician, who had helped to bring her into the world, was summoned hastily to prevent her early departure from it. This was the "curious case" that so bothered him; and this pale, languid girl of thirteen in the blue-canopied bed was the one he intended to transplant into another soil.

A short, sharp tap announced his arrival. The nurse opened the door.

"Good-morning, little girl--ah, ah! Saint Valentine's Day? I had forgotten it; all those came this morning?" he said cheerily, pointing to a table on which Gabrielle had placed all the remembrances but the flowers.

"Yes, Doctor Heath; but my best valentine, you know, is papa, and after him, you."