Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"Now, grandma," she said, when breakfast was over. "I am going to do the washing. I must do something to work off my superfluous health, and strength, and muscle. Look at that arm, will you?" and she threw out her bare arm, which for whiteness and roundness and symmetry of proportion, might have been coveted by the most fashionable lady in the land. "Go back to your rocking-chair and rest your dear, old lame foot on your softest cushion, and see how soon I will have everything done. It is just seven now, and by ten we shall be all slicked up, as Ann Eliza Peterkin says."

It was of no use to try to resist Jerrie. She would have her own way; and so Mrs. Crawford, after skimming her milk, and attending to the cream, went to her rocking-chair and her cushion, and sat there quietly, while Jerrie in the wood-shed pounded and rubbed, and boiled and rinsed, and wrung and starched and blued, and hung upon the line article after article, until there remained only a few towels and aprons and stockings and socks, and a pair of colored overalls which Harold had worn at his work. As these last were rather soiled and had on them patches of paint, Jerrie was attacking them with a will, when her grandmother called out with great trepidation:

"Jerrie, Jerrie, do wipe your hands and come quick! Here's Tom Tracy, hitching his horse to the gate."

Jerrie's first impulse was to do as her grandmother bade her, and her second to stay where she was.

"If Tom chooses to call so early he must take me as he finds me," she thought, while to her grandmother she said: "Nonsense! Who cares for Tom Tracy? If he asks for me, send him to the woodshed. I can't stop my work."

In a moment the elegant Tom, fresh from his perfumed bath, the odor of which still lingered about him, and faultlessly attired in a cool summer suit, was bending his tall figure in the door-way of the woodshed, where Jerrie, who was rubbing away on Harold's overalls, received him with a nod and a smile, as she said:

"Good-morning, Tom. You are up early, and so was I. Business before pleasure, you know; so I hope you will excuse me if I keep right on. I have stinted myself to get through, mopping and all, by ten, and it is now nine by Peterkin's bell. Pray be seated. How is Maude?"

And she pointed to a wooden chair near the door, where Tom sat down, wholly nonplussed, and not knowing at all what to say first.

Never before had he been received in this fashion, and it struck him that there was something incongruous between himself, in his dainty attire, with a cluster of beautiful roses in his hand, and that chair, minus a back, in the woodshed, where the smell of the soap-suds would have made him faint and sick if he had not been near the open door.

Tom had not slept well the previous night. He had joined the fine dinner-party his mother had given to the Harts, and St. Claires, and Athertons, and had sat next to Fred Raymond's sister Marian, a very pretty young girl with a good deal that was foreign in her style and in her accent for she had been in Europe nine years, and had only just come home. Everything in her manner was perfect, and Tom acknowledged to himself that she was the most highly polished and cultivated girl he had ever met; and still she tired him, and he was constantly contrasting her with Jerrie, and thinking how much better he should enjoy himself if she were there beside him, with her ready wit and teasing remarks, which frequently amounted to ridicule. Jerrie had been very gracious to him on the train, and had laughed and joked with him quite as much as she had with Dick St. Claire.