“Martha and I were sitting together just before lunch, when the bell rang. ‘I think that must be the little relative whom we are expecting,’ said Martha, and a second later the butler ushered in a nun and a fourteen-year-old girl.
“I wish you could have seen Martha’s greeting! It was exactly what she would have given a woman of the world, paying a morning call. She was concentrated extract of courtesy and breeding. The child, who was evidently nervous and expectant of a warmer welcome was instantly chilled by it. But she rose to it! She rose to it magnificently! She has rather fine eyes, her mother’s eyes as I remember them, and a self-possessed manner for a child of her age. I tried to gush over her a bit, but she would have none of me. Having been rebuffed by her hostess, she had no intention of allowing an undetermined factor to the situation to make amends to her.
“The nun would not remain, and departed immediately after formally handing over her charge. She kissed Charlotte (the child is named for her mother), and I rather fancied that, in spite of her cold welcome, the child is not reluctant to enter on a more brilliant life than the conventical one. At any rate, she did not shed any tears.
“Charlotte was sent upstairs with a maid to make her toilette for luncheon. ‘Your cousins regret not being here to welcome you,’ said Martha suavely, ‘but they went out to the country place of a friend for a day’s skating. They will see you at dinner.’
“‘I am very glad they did not change their plans on my account,’ said my little nun that might have been.
“Cornelius came home for luncheon and was stiffer than Martha. He was self-conscious, that was apparent. We had the most perfect luncheon imaginable, but though Martha prides herself on her heating arrangements and their temperatures never vary a degree, I felt as if the outside air had crept through the whole house.
“I am sorry for that girl from the bottom of my heart. Martha hates the sight of her, and the girl knew it before she had been twenty minutes in the house. She will have food and dress and every material luxury dealt out to her as lavishly as it is to Martha’s own girls; but of good-will, kindness, human affection, not a drop. Instead, she will receive a courtesy measured by the most approved social standards. She will never be allowed to forget for one moment that it is given from a high sense of duty, and not from any sense of affection. I am not sure that Cornelius has done the child a kindness. She might have fared better in a boarding-school. At the same time, I have a great deal of sympathy for Martha. I shouldn’t be at all nice about it, you know, if you raked up a dead and gone sweetheart’s child and established her among our brood.”
Within a few weeks after the writing of this epistle, Mrs. Spencer expressed herself to an elderly relative perched in a very old colonial home among the hills of Vermont.
“Charlotte’s little daughter is now with us. She is a very reserved child with beautiful manners—I suppose convent training does give that—and, her teachers think, has an exceptional mind. We have had private teachers for her this year because, though her elementary training is fair, she is greatly lacking in general information, though she has a curious accumulation of Roman Catholic religious lore.