“Yes, I know, but I supposed one’s respectability depended upon himself—his conduct, I mean, rather than what he does for a living—if the business is honest and justifiable.”
“There’s where you are grandly mistaken,” said Anna. “One’s position depends upon how much money he has, or how many influential friends. Is my Aunt Mary any better than when she stitched shoes and sold gingerbread? Of course not. She’s John Ferguson’s daughter just the same; but she’s rich now. She is Mrs. Colonel Rossiter, and looked up to, and admired, and run after by the whole town, while ma and I are just tolerated because of our relationship to her. ‘Who is that stylish-looking girl?’ I once heard a stranger say to Sue Granger, who replied: ‘That’s Anna Ferguson; her mother is a dressmaker,’ and that settled it. The stranger—a stuck-up piece from Boston—cared nothing for a girl whose mother made dresses for a living. Sometimes I get so mad I hate everything and everybody.”
Here Anna stopped a moment, and Reinette scanned her very closely from her head to her feet, deciding, mentally that she was good-looking, and had about her a certain style which strangers would naturally remark, even though it was rather fast than refined. But she was not a lady, either by nature or education, and Reinette, who, in some things was far-seeing for her years, saw readily the difficulty under which her cousin labored. She was not naturally refined, but on the contrary, vulgar and suspicious, and jealous of those who occupied a position above her; and while she took pains with her person, and affected a certain haughtiness of manner, her language was decidedly second-class and frequently interlarded with slang and harsh denunciations of the very people whose favor she wished to gain.
While Reinette was thinking all this, Anna began again:
“I wish mother would sell out and take that odious sign from our front window; we can live without dressmaking, but I’ve given it up. She had a chance a few weeks ago. A Frenchwoman from Martha’s Vineyard wrote, asking her terms, which she put so high that Miss La Rue declined, and so that fell through.”
“What did you call the woman?” Reinette asked, rousing up suddenly from her reclining posture and looking earnestly at Anna, who replied:
“Miss Margery La Rue, from Martha’s Vineyard. She has done some work, I believe for my cousins, who think highly of her, and suggested her buying out ma’s business. Why, how excited you seem! Do you know her?” she asked, as Reinette sprang up quickly, her cheeks flushing, her eyes sparkling, and her whole appearance indicative of pleasurable surprise.
“Margery La Rue,” she repeated. “The name is the same, and she is French, too, you say, but it cannot be my Margery, for the last I heard from her she was in Nice, and talked of going to Rome, but it is singular that there should be two dressmakers of the same name. What do you know of her? Is she old or young?”
“I know nothing except the name,” Anna said, astonished at her cousin’s interest in and evident liking for a mere dressmaker. “Is your Miss La Rue young, and was she your friend?” she asked, and Reinette replied:
“Yes, she was my friend—the dearest I ever had, and the only one, I may say, except papa, and she is beautiful, too; she has the loveliest face I ever saw—sweet and spirituelle as one of Murillo’s Madonnas, with soft blue eyes, and sunny hair.”