Clarice could scarcely have given any good reason for her antipathy to Miss Hansford except on general principles. She did not like Oak City and would never have come there from choice. It was not gay enough, nor fashionable enough to suit her. She called Miss Hansford a dowdy and a crank and included her in the category of second-class people who were no society for her. All this was repeated to Miss Hansford by her colored factotum, Martha Ann, who had taken Sally’s place at the Percys, and, after a few weeks, had left because she was not allowed to entertain her young men on the steps of the dining room, and had been told she talked and laughed too loud for a servant. Her next place was with Miss Hansford, to whom she retailed all she had heard and seen at Mrs. Percy’s, with many additions. Miss Hansford knew it was not good form to listen to the gossip, but when she became mixed with it curiosity overcame her sense of propriety, and she not only listened but questioned, while her wrath waxed hotter and hotter with what she heard.
“Said you’s a second-class and a crank, and she didn’t see why Miss Ralston could make so much of you,” was Martha Ann’s last item, and then Miss Hansford, who had never forgotten Mrs. Percy’s slight in not returning her call, lost her temper entirely.
She had heard herself called a crank before, and, looking in the dictionary, had found so many definitions to the word that she felt a little uncertain as to which applied to herself.
“I s’pose I am queer and different from folks like the Percys, and I thank the Lord I am,” she thought, but to the “second-class” she objected.
She, whose lineage went back to Oliver Cromwell and Miles Standish and a Scotch lord, she to be called second-class by Clarice Percy was too much. Who were the Percys? she’d like to know. “Nobodies! Sprung from a white slave! Talk to me of F. F. V.’s, as if I didn’t know all about ’em. Second-class, indeed! It makes me so mad!” and Miss Hansford banged the door so hard that Martha Ann, who had evoked the storm and was washing dishes in the sink, dropped a china saucer in her fright and broke it.
After this, Miss Hansford’s antipathy to the Percys increased, and not even the grey silk Clarice had selected mollified her completely. Still, it did a good deal towards it, and she gradually became more reconciled to the thought of the engagement.
“I s’pose Paul must marry sometime,” she said, “and if it was anybody but Clarice, I’d try to be glad, but try as I will I can’t abide the Percys.”
CHAPTER VI.
ELITHE’S PHOTOGRAPH.
The May days were growing longer and warmer. Many of the cottages were open and there was a feeling of summer everywhere, when suddenly the weather changed. The sea looked green and angry, the wind blew cold across it from the east, bringing a drenching rain which, beginning in the early morning, lasted through the day with a persistency which precluded anything like intercourse with the outside world unless it were necessary. Miss Hansford had been alone all day, with no one to speak to but her cat, Jim. To him and to herself she had talked a good deal of the past, the present and the future. The present was dreary enough, with the thick fog on the water and the steady fall of rain, which increased rather than diminished as the night came on. It was some little diversion to carry pans and pails to places where the roof leaked, and to crowd bits of sacking against the doors, under which pools of water were finding their way. When this was done and darkness had settled down and her lamp was lighted, she began to wonder what she should do next to pass the time.
“I ain’t hungry, but it’ll take my mind if I get myself and Jim some supper. I b’lieve I’ll make griddle cakes. Paul used to be so fond of ’em when he was a boy. I wish he was here to-night,” she said, as she replenished her fire in her small kitchen and busied herself with her preparations for her evening meal. “I shall sit here by the stove where I can lift the cakes from the griddle to my plate and save steps,” she thought, and, bringing a small round table or stand from the dining room, she covered it with a towel, placed upon it a plate, a cup and a saucer and a dish of milk for Jim, who was badly spoiled, and was to take his supper with her.