Missy: A Novel

by Miriam Coles Harris

It was well that the duster was not made of anything sterner than feathers, or the delicate ornaments of the dressing-table would have had a hard time of it, for she brushed with increased vehemence as she got worked up in talking. "She told me she would have preferred straw for her bed, but it was no matter now, as it was all made up. Straw was the only thing for beds, she said, and to be changed once a week. I'm sorry I didn't take her at her word. I know she enjoys the springs and the new mattress, and if it hadn't been for the trouble, I'd have given her her fill of straw, and lumpy straw at that. I told her I was used to clean and decent Christian folks, who didn't need to have their beds burned once a week, and who didn't carry diseases about with them, and who could get along without carbolic. And as to carrying up water enough to flush a sewer every night and morning, I wouldn't do it for her nor any other woman, clean or dirty. And as to being called up at twelve o'clock at night to look at the thermometer and to close the window an inch and a quarter, and to spread a blanket over her feet to keep the temperature of her body from going a little bit too low—and then being called up at five to look again, and to take the blanket off, and to see that it didn't get a little too high,—it's just a trifle more than I can bear. I hope the new woman will like it, when she comes. I'm going next week, Wednesday, and that's the end of it."

"I am ashamed of you, Goneril; you're not going to do anything of the sort. Don't upset Miss Varian by talking so to her. Let her have a little peace, if she likes Mrs. Smatter."

"I'm the one to talk about being upset. It's bad enough to wait on an old vixen like Miss Varian, but when it comes to waiting on all her company, and when her company are fools and idiots, I say it's time to go. I've put up with a good deal in this house. I've come down in the world, but that's no reason I should put up with everything. It's one thing to say you'll be obliging and sleep in a room that's handy, so you could be called if anything extraordinary happened, where the person you're looking after is afflicted of Providence. But it's another thing to be broke of your rest two nights running to keep count of the thermometer over a well woman who hasn't sense enough to know when she's hot and when she's cold. It's bad enough to be Help anyhow, but it ain't worth while to be walked over. I can stand folks that's got some sense, even if they've got some temper. But people like this, jumbling up almanacs and doctors' books, and free thinkin' tracts; them I can't stand, and what's more, I won't stand, and there's an end of it."

There wouldn't have been an end of it, though, if Miss Rothermel had not got up and walked away. There is a limit beyond which even American Farmers' Daughters must not be permitted to go, and Goneril had certainly reached that limit, and as she would have talked on for an hour in steadily increasing vehemence, there was nothing but for Missy to go away, with silent disapprobation, and wish the visitor well out of the house. The visitor she found at the breakfast-table, blandly stirring her weak tea, and waiting for her oatmeal to have an additional fifteen minutes on the fire. The cook had been called in and acknowledged that the oatmeal had only had two hours of cooking. Mrs. Smatter had explained, on exact scientific principles, the necessity of boiling oatmeal two hours and thirty-five minutes, and the wheels of breakfast stood still while this was being accomplished. The cook was in a rage, for oatmeal was one of her strong points, and she always boiled it two hours. Miss Varian was growing distrustful of everything. Mrs. Smatter had raised her suspicions about the adulteration of all the food on the table. Even the water, she found, wasn't filtered with the proper filter, and there was salt enough in the potatoes to destroy the tissues of a whole household. She desired the waitress to have a pitcher of water boiled for her, and then iced; and she would be glad if she would ask the grocer where he got his salt.

By dinner time Miss Varian's usual good appetite was destroyed; she was so engaged in speculating about the assimilation of her food, that she had a bad indigestion. When evening came, she was so fretful she was almost inclined to quarrel with her new-found friend. As they sat around the lamp, Mrs. Smatter became a little restless because the conversation showed a tendency to degenerate into domestic or commonplace channels; she strove to buoy it up with æsthetic, speculative, scientific bladders, as the case might be. Missy pricked one or two of these, by asking some question which wasn't in Mrs. Smatter's catechism; but, nothing daunted, she would inflate another, and go sailing on to the admiration of her hearers.

A letter had come from St. John, in which he gave some hope that he might return in the autumn, though he entered into no explanation of the reason for such a change of plan. Missy was all curiosity, and her mother was all solicitude, but they naturally did not talk much to each other about it, and of course did not wish it alluded to in Mrs. Smatter's presence. Miss Varian, however, asked questions, and brought the subject forward with persistence. It seemed to Miss Rothermel profanation to have her brother's name spoken by this woman. What was her dismay to hear Mrs. Smatter say, settling herself into a speculative attitude:

"I hear, Mrs. Varian, that your son is in one of those organizations they call brotherhoods. I should like very much, if you don't mind, if you would tell me something about his youth, and how you brought him up, and what traces you saw of this tendency, and how you account for it."

"I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Varian. "Do you mean—his education—or—or—"

"I mean," said Mrs. Smatter, "was he physically strong, and properly developed, and did you attend to his diet? I should have thought oatmeal and fish and phosphates might have counteracted this tendency; that is, of course, if you could have anticipated it."

"He has always been in very fine health," said the mother.