As the children had grown up, and their varied mental gifts cried aloud for the best education of the times, Molly had, indeed, had much ado to make both ends meet. Luckily for her, the strain of keeping up appearances was not among her trials.
When the Blairs had married, possessing between them means enough to give and take the hospitality of that simpler period, they were a part of the circle that in those days codified the social laws of the metropolis. Mistress Molly, a whilom belle of her set, did not lack for attentions, and Terence was popular. But very soon, it became apparent to the young couple that they were straining overmuch to keep abreast with people who affected to put aside the hum-drum ways of their Revolutionary, or Dutch, or Puritan ancestors; that the growing elaboration of life among their kind must drive the Blairs either to accept without returning, or not to accept at all. So Molly let go the threads of gossamer that bound her to her world, and little by little the Blairs had drifted into insignificance. To Terence, with his insular density as to the shades of difference in American society, it had not seemed a mighty matter to give up Molly’s friends; but she was a woman, and at first it had cost her a few natural pangs. Now for nearly twenty years she and Terence had lived their own life, and on the whole had done very well without the things forsaken.
How was it, then, that to-night, as the little house-mother sat at her homely task, her thoughts, roving over the field of her interests, general and special, had settled with a tinge of wistfulness upon a very trivial matter? In an evening newspaper she had chanced to read the account of a ball, given the night before for the young daughter of one of her friends of early years, when the débutante had literally walked upon flowers.
“Lilies of the valley strewing the floor of the alcove where Tilly Beaumoris stood beside her mother to receive! And for my girl, to-night of all nights, when she plays her violin before Levitsky, not so much as a posy to wear in her best frock!” This was the arrow that pierced Mrs. Molly’s armor!
Yes, it was Kathleen, bright, radiant Kathleen—her nineteen-year-old daughter, the sunshine and perfume of their home—who had begun to disturb the long-standing family peace.
What Molly had cheerfully accepted for herself, she now, like a true American parent, began to think might be bettered for Kathleen.
An hour before, she had seen the child—heaven in her face—set forth with her father for a musicale in the studio of an artist, who had promised to fetch there to hear her play the great Herr Levitsky himself, whose verdict made or marred an aspirant in her field. And Molly had no sort of doubt as to Kathleen’s rare talent for the violin.
The only cloud upon Kathleen’s horizon had been that mamma must stop behind.
Molly had pleaded—though Kathleen quite understood it to be a pious fiction—that she really could not make the effort to go to Crichton’s musicale; that she was better off at home; that she would certainly be nervous, and that Kathleen would see it, and fail to play as well. Kathleen knew—and Molly knew she knew—that the frugal little lady’s only remaining evening gown was too hopelessly decrepit to make another appearance in public without the renovation requiring time and outlay just then impossible to bestow on it. As for its alternate—the old black satin surviving the days of a fuller purse—that had “suffered a sea change” into modern conformity with gores, and gathers, and what not, and was at the moment rippling sheenfully from Kathleen’s own slender waist, the bodice veiled in transparent gauze of the same somber hue, through which the girl’s white throat and splendid shoulders gleamed with a pearly luster.
What Kathleen had done to bridge over the insincerity of her mother’s excuses, was to put her strong, round arms about Molly’s neck and half blind her with enthusiastic kisses.