“They are both beauties and no mistake,” Paul said, following Miss Hansford into the sitting room, where she heard a blind banging. “Keep them here, where you can see them every day,” he continued, placing them on the mantel with Miss Hansford’s Bible and hymn book and spectacle case, a card of sea mosses, a conch shell and a plaster bust of John Wesley.
Returning to the kitchen, he sat down again by the stove and plied Miss Hansford with questions concerning Elithe, who interested him greatly. Miss Hansford could only tell him what Roger had written of her, but she had a good deal to say of Roger and Lucy Potter and the Potters generally, whose blood was not as good as that of the Hansfords. At this Paul laughed. He had suspected that one of Miss Hansford’s objections to Clarice was the thinness of the Percy blood compared with the Ralston’s. For himself he didn’t care a picayune for the color of any one’s blood, and it amused him greatly to hear this peculiar old lady vaunting the superiority of her family and his over the Percys and Potters. For a time he listened patiently, and then, as it was growing late, he returned to the real object of his visit, the refusal of her rooms for August and possibly a part of July,—he would let her know in time. The rooms were promised and then he arose to go, after one more look at the photographs.
“I don’t believe Elithe has much Potter blood in her,” he said, “and I’d send for her if I were you. I’d like to see her myself.”
The next morning Miss Hansford took down the morocco case and looked long and critically at Elithe. Paul’s admiration of her was having its influence. The French name, the actress aunt and the Potter blood did not seem quite so obnoxious to her, and she began to feel a longing to see the girl whose eyes held her as they had held Paul Ralston.
“I s’pose an outing would do her good, and I can afford it, too,” she said. “What am I saving my money for? To give to the Methodists, I suppose, and they don’t need it half as much as Roger.”
The idea of sending for Elithe was beginning to take definite shape, and the more she thought about it the more surprised she grew to find how lonesome she was and how much she wanted the girl whose eyes followed her so persistently and seemed to say, “Send for me; send for me.” From an economical standpoint it might be well to do so, for if Miss Hansford’s rooms were full of lodgers she would need help, and colored servants were out of the question. Martha Ann, the best she had ever employed, had decamped with three napkins, two silver spoons and a fruit knife. Her would-be successor had come to the front door in a silk dress and big hat, and, introducing herself as Mrs. Helena Jackson, had asked if Miss Hansford wished to hire either a wash-lady or a lady to do general housework. She was told that Miss Hansford wanted neither a wash-lady nor a nigger, and the door slammed in her face.
“No more darkies for me,” she said, and as she must have some one she began to wonder if Elithe would not do. “I don’t s’pose she’d be much more than a teacup wiper, though if what Roger says is true, she is capable of doing more than that; and then I feel it in my bones that I ought to send for her.”
For a week or more Miss Hansford kept up this style of conversation with herself, while her bones clamored more and more for Elithe. At last she made up her mind and wrote to Roger inviting Elithe to spend the summer with her, and as much longer time as she chose, if she proved the right kind of a girl, and didn’t make more trouble than her company was worth.
“One thing I may as well mention now,” she wrote, “I can’t have her gadding nights to concerts and rides on the water and clambakes and the Casino and the like. She must be in by nine, or half-past at the latest, as I keep early hours. I can’t have her slat her things round everywhere. I can’t have her sing and whistle in the house. I ain’t used to it. I like to be still and meditate. I don’t want you to think she isn’t to have any privileges, for she is. I shall use her well, and I inclose money for her fare and a little more, as she may want to buy a dress or two. Let me know when to expect her.—Phebe Hansford.”
“P. S.—Give my regards to Lucy and a dollar to each of the boys. I’ve allowed for that.”