The Cameron pride; or, purified by suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

The “spare bedroom,” kept for company, was only large enough to admit the high-post bed, a single chair, and the old-fashioned wash-stand, with the hole in the top for the bowl, and a drawer beneath for towels; and the two girls held a consultation as to whether it would not be better to dispense with the parlor altogether, and give that room to their visitor. But this was vetoed by Aunt Betsy, who, having finished the back door-sill, had now come round to the front, and with her scrubbing-brush in one hand and her saucer of sand in the other, held forth upon the foolishness of the girls.

“Of course, if they had a beau, they’d want a t’other room, else where would they do their sparkin’?”

That settled it. The parlor must remain as it was, Katy said, and Aunt Betsy went on with her scouring, while Helen and Katy consulted together how to make the huge feather bed more like the mattresses to which Wilford must be accustomed. Helen’s mind being the more suggestive, solved the problem first, and a large comfortable was brought from the box in the garret and folded carefully over the bed, which, thus hardened and flattened, “seemed like a mattress,” Katy said, for she tried it, feeling quite well satisfied with the room when it was finished. And certainly it was not uninviting, with its strip of bright carpeting upon the floor, its vase of flowers upon the stand, and its white-fringed curtain sweeping back from the narrow window.

“I’d like to sleep here myself,” was Katy’s comment, while Helen offered no opinion, but followed her sister into the yard, where they were to sweep the grass and prune the early September flowers.

This afforded Aunt Betsy a chance to reconnoitre and criticise, which last she did unsparingly.

“What have them children been doin’ to that bed? Put on a quilt, as I’m alive! It would break my back to lie there, and this Carmon is none of the youngest, accordin’ to their tell; nigh onto thirty, if not turned. It will make his bones ache, of course. I am glad I know better than to treat visitors that way. The comforter may stay, but I’ll be bound I’ll make it softer!” And stealing up the stairs, Aunt Betsy brought down a second feather bed, much lighter than the one already on, but still large enough to suggest the thought of smothering. This she had made herself, intending it as a part of Katy’s “setting out,” should she ever marry; and as things now seemed tending that way, it was only right, she thought, that Mr. Carmon, as she called him, should begin to have the benefit of it. Accordingly two beds, instead of one, were placed beneath the comfortable, which Aunt Betsy permitted to remain.

“I’m mighty feared they’ll find me out,” she said, taking great pains in the making of her bed, and succeeding so well that when her task was done there was no perceptible difference between Helen’s bed and her own, except that the latter was a few inches higher than the former, and more nearly resembled a pincushion in shape.

There was but little chance for Aunt Betsy to be detected, for Helen, supposing the room to be in order, had dismissed it from her mind, and was training a rose over a frame, while Katy was on her way to Linwood in quest of various little things which Mrs. Lennox considered indispensable to the entertainment of a man like Wilford Cameron. Morris was out on his piazza, enjoying the fine prospect he had of the sun shining across the pond, on the Silverton hill, and just gilding the top of the little church nestled in the valley. At sight of Katy he rose and greeted her with the kind, brotherly manner now habitual with him, for he had learned to listen quite calmly while Katy talked to him, as she often did, of Wilford Cameron, never trying to conceal from him how anxious she was for some word of remembrance, and often asking if he thought Mr. Cameron would ever write to her. It was hard at first for Morris to listen, and harder still to keep back the passionate words of love trembling on his lips—to refrain from asking her to take him in Cameron’s stead—him who had loved her so long. But Morris had kept silence, and as the weeks went by there came insensibly into his heart a hope, or rather conviction, that Wilford Cameron had forgotten the little girl who might in time turn to him, gladdening his home just as she did every spot where her fairy footsteps trod. Morris did not fully know that he was hugging this fond dream until he felt the keen pang which cut like a dissector’s knife as Katy, turning her bright, eager face up to him, whispered softly, “He’s coming to-morrow—he surely is; I have his letter to tell me so.”

Morris could not see the sunshine upon the distant hills, although it lay there just as purple and warm as it had a moment before. There was an instant of darkness, in which the hills, the pond, the sun-setting, and Katy seemed a great way off to Morris, trying so hard to be calm, and mentally asking for help to do so. But Katy’s hat, which she swung in her hand, had become entangled in the vines encircling one of the pillars of the piazza, and so she did not notice him until all traces of his agitation were past, and he could talk with her concerning Wilford; then playfully lifting her basket he asked what she had come to get.

This was not the first time the great house had rendered a like service to the little house, and so Katy did not blush when she explained that her mother wanted Morris’s forks, and salt-cellars, and spoons, and would he be kind enough to bring the caster over himself, and come to dinner to-morrow at two o’clock, and would he go for Mr. Cameron? The forks, and salt-cellars, and spoons, and caster were cheerfully promised, while Morris consented to go for the guest; and then Katy came to the rest of her errand, the part distasteful to her, inasmuch as it concerned Uncle Ephraim—honest, unsophisticated Uncle Ephraim, who would come to the table in his shirt sleeves! This was the burden of her grief—the one thing she dreaded most, because she knew how such an act was looked upon by Mr. Cameron who, never having lived in the country a day in his life, except as he was either guest or traveler, could not make due allowance for these little departures from refinement, so obnoxious to people of his training.