“I’ve made it a rule to guard against nervousness in every form, and what is the result? I have never been sick a day in my life, and have no idea how it feels to have the headache, or the toothache, or the backache, or, in fact, any ache, and that is the way it should be.”
She looked the woman never to have an ache or pain, or if she had, to strangle it at once, and Beatrice shrank from her involuntarily as from an Amazon, while poor, sick Mrs. Morton colored scarlet, and roused in defense of her own ailments, which Mrs. Hayden seemed to think she could help.
“Just because you’ve never been sick, Julia,” she said, “you cannot understand it in others, but you go out a missionary once, and have four children in six years, and be as poor as poor can be, and you might know something of aches and pains, and have some weaknesses which cold baths and oatmeal could not cure.”
“I would not go out as a missionary, and I would not have the four children in six years; so you see it is not a supposable case,” Mrs. Hayden retorted, and then Bee hated her, and was doubly glad that little Trix was not to fall into her hands.
Mrs. Hayden herself was not sorry. She had made the offer from a sense of duty, for she was high up in everything of that kind, and performed her duties rigidly, from dieting her husband, a weak, feeble man, on oatmeal and pearl barley, to telling her neighbors their faults, and how they could amend them. She did not like children, and it had cost her something to make up her mind to have one in her house; but she had made the offer, and meant to stand by it if it should be accepted. Finding it convenient just then to visit New York, she had called upon her poor relations to learn the result of her offer, and when told what it was she expressed no regret, but asked many question about Miss Belknap, who seemed to her to be crazy to think of taking Trixey. Suddenly there flashed upon her the recollection of a rumor heard years ago, and, in her usual brusque way, she asked:
“Is she the girl to whom Theo was once engaged, and who jilted him?”
“They never were engaged, but he liked her,” Mrs. Morton answered faintly, while a throb of neuralgic pain shot through her head, and a bright red spot burned on her cheeks.
She was far more a lady, in her brown alpaca dressing-gown, than was this blunt women in her velvet and silk; and so Beatrice thought when she came in immediately after her identity with Theo’s first love had been proved. Mrs. Hayden never acknowledged any person her superior, but she saw at a glance that Miss Belknap was somebody, and an important somebody, too, and thought to stamp herself as somebody, by talking of her house, and grounds, and servants, and the watering-places she frequented, and the people she had met. She was now stopping on Madison avenue with Mrs. Sniffe, who was Mr. Hayden’s cousin; probably Miss Belknap knew Mrs. Sniffe, or at least had heard of her. She attended Dr. Adams’ church, and was quite a leader there.
“Do you know her?” she asked squarely; and Bee replied:
“Yes, I have some acquaintance with Mrs. Sniffe. I meet her occasionally at parties.”