Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig

by Mary Jane Holmes

Lottie smiled derisively, but her voice was very sweet and pleasant as she said:

“I hardly think Celine is accomplished to the extent of apple pie and ginger-snaps.”

Amasa felt the rebuke and wondered at his temerity in expecting anything so common from a cook, whose name was Celine, and who sometimes took the title of Madame.

As yet he had made no headway with regard to the call, and so at last he blurted it out, and told Mrs. Lottie plainly that he wished her to call on Mrs. Craig and show her some attention.

“She is a lady, every whit,” he said, “and pretty, too, and intelligent, and well—yes—she rather expects you to call, and she would like to see a little of New York society, and she don’t know a single soul, and it’s lonesome for her, and you can show her some attention without hurting you one bit, and I hope you will do it.”

He had said a great deal more than he intended saying, for something in Lottie’s proud eyes exasperated him, and without waiting for her to answer he left the breakfast-room suddenly, and his wife heard the bang of the street door as it shut behind him.

“Expects me to call and show her some attention! How absurd,” she said to herself, as she went back to her room. “She cannot be much accustomed to the usages of society if she supposes I am to call on every clerk who happens to get married. Why, my list is so large now that I am nearly crazy and I certainly shall not add Mrs. John Craig’s name to it. Apple pie and ginger-snaps, and one servant! Poor John! He was a nice kind of a fellow, and ought to have been rich.”

And then Lottie fell into a fit of musing as to what might have been had John been rich instead of poor. The truth was, Lottie Guile had fancied John Craig better than any man she ever knew, and once, after a long chat with him in the office, where she was waiting for her father, she had tried to make up her mind to encourage the liking he evidently had for her, but fear of what Mrs. Grundy would say if the daughter of Richard Guile should marry her father’s clerk prevailed, and when Amasa Steele offered himself and his half-million, she accepted him, and wished he was not quite so gray, and that he looked more like the confidential clerk, who was present at the wedding, and who, she thought, seemed a little sorry.

And John was sorry that one as young and sprightly as Lottie should marry a man so wholly unlike herself as the sober, middle-aged Amasa Steele. He was sorry to have her marry at all, for he had found it very pleasant to chat and laugh and sing with her on the occasions when chance threw her in his way, but further than that he did not care. He had known and loved Kitty Clew ever since she was a child, and he drew her to school on his sled, and he expected one day to make her his wife, so foolish Lottie was mistaken when she thought there was a pang in his heart as he saw her made Mrs. Amasa Steele, and called her by that name. She knew nothing of Kitty Clew, and went on dreaming her little romance and fancying there was one joy less in John Craig’s life until she heard he was to be married. There was a shadow on her brow, and she felt somehow as if John had misused and deceived her, while to crown all she was expected to call on his wife and make a friend of her. It was a hard case and Lottie felt aggrieved, and the first time she met John Craig she was very cool toward him, and never asked for his wife or hinted that she knew there was such a creature in the world. John felt her manner keenly, but did not tell Kitty, who, knowing that Mrs. Steele had returned, began to look daily for the call she so certainly expected. One after another the dresses her aunties had pronounced useless were brought out and worn, and in the prettiest of toilets Kitty waited morning, noon and night for one who never came. Lottie did not call, neither did any one else except the clergyman to whom Kitty had brought a letter of introduction from her own rector, and who dropped in for a few moments to see his new parishioner.

Accustomed at home to be first in every good work, Kitty asked what she could do, and was told of the mission school, where teachers were always needed, and of the regular sewing society of the church, which met one day in each week. Kitty was pleased with the mission school, and entered heart and soul into the work, and found fast friends among the ragged girls and boys, who looked upon her as a kind of divinity. From the sewing society, however, she shrank at first, dreading to encounter so many strangers; but when she heard what need there was for help, she laid aside her own personal feelings and went week after week, mostly from a sense of duty, and a little, it may be, with a hope, that by some chance she might come to know those with whom she worshiped Sunday after Sunday, and with whom she had more than once knelt around the chancel on communion days.