“Oh, mother and Katy, just listen to this!” she cried, sitting down in the doorway and reading the advertisement. “I mean to apply. I am told many young ladies do this very thing just for the excitement and a little money. It will be such a lark, and it’s where our great-grandfather Crosby used to live. You know Aunt Pledger wrote us that a Mr. Marsh was fitting it up for a big house party and calling it Maplehurst. I’ve always wanted to see the swell world without being seen,—have wanted to know how they demean themselves towards each other every day, and how they treat their employees, and here’s my chance. The highest of wages, too, though I don’t care so much for that as for the fun. Yes, I mean to apply.”
She was very much excited, but her ardor was slightly dampened by her more practical sister Kate, who exclaimed:
“Fanny Sheridan Sherman! Are you crazy? Applying for a place as waitress in a hotel, or boarding-house, or whatever it is! Have you no pride, and what do you think Aunt Pledger would say, and how would she like her New York friends to know her niece was a waiter?”
“Aunt Pledger!” and Fanny, or Sherry, as she was usually called, laughed a low, rippling laugh as she leaned against the door-jamb and fanned herself with the paper. “I have never been able to make you understand that Aunt Pledger isn’t a swell woman, if she does live in New York. Her house is away down town on a side street, and her furniture the same she had when she was married years and years ago. She keeps one girl, Huldah, and she is gone half the time, leaving Aunt Pledger to open the door herself and do lots of things. I know she has plenty of money, but is close, and she don’t care what we do to get a living, if it is respectable and we don’t come upon her. When father died last summer and she came to the funeral, didn’t she ask us both what we intended to do, or what we could do, and when I told her I couldn’t do a blessed thing, unless it was housework, didn’t she say, ‘Better that than do nothing and expect to be cared for by others. Young people succeed better who rely on themselves.’ I believe she was afraid we might ask her for help. Little we would get. I know she had me in New York two weeks, and took me everywhere, and she was very kind to me. But that was the first attention she ever showed us, and I don’t believe she would have done that if it hadn’t been for Miss Saltus, whom she met on some charitable work, and who spoke of us and said, ‘The next time either of your nieces are in New York let me know; I’d like to call upon them.’ After that Aunt Pledger invited me and did the handsome thing, for she never does a thing by halves, and then Mr. Saltus came to us in the opera-box and was glad to see me, and that helped. She is an awful good woman, of course,—goes to church twice every Sunday, rain or shine, and half supports a society for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals; but she believes in letting people take care of themselves, if they can. Her pride will not be hurt because I hire out as a waitress. I don’t know enough to teach as you do, but I can wash dishes and wait upon table, and earn some money and not let you be the only bread-winner. Then I shall enjoy immensely being Mr. What’s-his-name’s waitress, and know I am somebody else just as good as he is. He is the man who came to Aunt Pledger’s when I was there, and asked if she ever knew old Mr. Marsh. I nearly broke the window trying to see him as he left the house.”
“Young?” Kate asked, and Sherry replied:
“Yes, and good looking, judging from the back of his head and the fit of his coat. Uncle Pledger knows about him as he does about all the smart set, although he’s not in it. He is just an old-time New Yorker, who has lived in the city fifty years and seen the rise and fall of everybody, and knows everybody by reputation. He might live uptown in one of those handsome brown stones, but, like Aunt Pledger, prefers to stay where he is, leaving the city to roll on as it pleases.”
Here Sherry laughed as she recalled her own and Katy’s ideas of Aunt Pledger’s house and style before her visit there the previous year. Born in Buford and the daughter of a clergyman, she knew little of the world except what she had seen at boarding-school, where, with Katy, she had spent a year. Of fashionable society she knew nothing, except as it was partially represented by the Saltus family, who owned a large house just outside the village, where they spent their summers. Between the Saltuses and Shermans a strong friendship had sprung up, and Sherry was right in her surmise that it was to Rose Saltus she owed her invitation to visit her aunt. With Kate she had talked a great deal of her New York relative,—had wondered why they were never asked to visit her and why she never visited them, or paid them any attention except to send herself and Kate and their mother each a handkerchief and their father a book at Christmas. For the rest of the year she ignored them entirely.
“Another handkerchief? Yes, and here’s the mark she forgot to take off: twenty cents! I have six of them now, all the same size, quality and price,—half cotton,” was Sherry’s contemptuous comment when the last batch of handkerchiefs arrived with the twenty-cent mark upon them.
Sherry was the outspoken one of the family, to whom the most latitude was allowed by her rather stern father while he was living. He had wanted a boy, whom he was to call Sheridan, after his favorite general. But she proved to be a girl, and was christened Fanny Sheridan, and grew up a bright, lighthearted, impulsive girl, fond of excitement and adventure, making friends wherever she went and feeling herself everybody’s equal. To see New York had been the dream of her life, and when Mrs. Pledger’s invitation came she was delighted, for now she should see life as it ebbed and flowed in a great city. She had heard that her Uncle Pledger was a millionaire, and had expected a grandeur which would quite overshadow her own home. Of just what she thought of the reality she never said much until the morning when she received Alex.’s advertisement, and Katy suggested that Aunt Pledger would feel hurt to have her grand-niece a waitress. Mr. and Mrs. Pledger had been very kind to her, and gone far out of their way to entertain her. They had never been to an opera in their lives until they took her there; and when the questions of seats came up they hired an expensive box, Mr. Pledger saying he’d do the whole thing or nothing, and he guessed he could afford to have a spree now and then. He had his spree and slept through half of it, but was glad Sherry enjoyed it, and was proud that Craig Saltus came into the box to call, and hoped those high bucks, the Marshes, saw him. If he was not in the smart set he knew everybody who was, and from having lived in New York so long both himself and wife were as good as encyclopedias with regard to the history of many of the people, and it was his boast that he had at some time loaned money to more than half of his more intimate acquaintances to tide them over some difficulty. He was proud of himself as a money lender,—proud that he could afford to wear plain clothes, live far down town and drive old Whitey. Sherry, however, did not seem quite in keeping with the old horse and buggy. Something in her face made him think of the grand turnouts and the ladies who graced them; and when the drive in the park was suggested, he thought to have a handsome carriage and “show her off with the best of ’em.” But his more frugal wife suggested that this would be quite an expense after the opera box, and though Sherry might grace any carriage he could hire, he would be out of place in his old gray coat and hat. So the carriage was given up and the drive taken behind Whitey. Sherry enjoyed it immensely, and saw Alex. Marsh, who Uncle Pledger told her “was a swell man, but about as good as they made ’em,” and knew that he drove behind them on their way home, and called afterwards to inquire about his Uncle Amos, who owned the farm where her great-grandfather once lived, but she thought no more about him.
Since that time her father had died, leaving his family, as clergymen’s families frequently are left, with little to depend upon besides their own exertions. They owned the house they lived in; there had been a life insurance, and Kate was teaching in a graded school. Sherry, who was the cleverest of housekeepers, and saved her delicate mother in every possible way, was doing nothing, and had puzzled her brain until it ached over the problem as to what she could do. She wanted to see the world and to earn some money at the same time, and here was her chance. The waitress part did not disturb her at all. She would still be Fanny Sheridan Sherman, although she did not intend to make any capital out of that or expect any favors. She would go like the rest of the girls and be one of them. She was rather self-willed when her mind was made up, and overcoming her mother’s and sister’s scruples, she wrote to Mrs. Groves in New York, asking for a situation as waitress at Maplehurst.