“I wonder if any of the others will be there,” said Katie. She was somewhat elated, although she was suspicious, and in a state of half resistance to Mrs. Stone and the rival Frank, whose rivalry the little schemer felt by instinct. As for Lucy, the object of all this plotting, she suspected nothing. She even felt a little guilty in the pleasure to which she looked forward. To be asked to Mrs. Stone’s room to tea on Sunday evening was a distinction of which all the girls were proud. It was like an invitation from the queen, a command which was not to be disregarded; but yet she had a little uneasiness in her mind, thinking of her little brother, who would be disappointed. Even for Mrs. Stone, the sovereign of this small world, she did not like to break faith with little Jock.
CHAPTER XI.
AN AFTERNOON TEA.
Mrs. Stone’s room was fitted up in the latest, which I need not say is far from being the newest fashion. It would indeed have been an insult to her to say that anything in it was new. Mr. Morris had only just begun to reign over the homes of the æsthetic classes; but Mrs. Stone was well in advance of her age, and her walls were covered with a very large pattern of acanthus-leaves in several shades of green, with curtains as nearly as possible the same in design and color. She had a number of plates hung about the walls instead of pictures, and here and there gleaming shelves and little cabinets full of china, which were a great relief and comfort to the eye. Her chairs were Chippendale, need it be said? and held her visitors upright in a dignified height and security. The room had but one window, which was large, but half-filled with designs in glass, and half overshadowed with a great lime-tree, which was delightful in summer, but in February not so delightful. The fire was at the end of the room, and the room was somewhat dark, especially in the afternoon. When the two girls went in several persons were dimly visible seated in those large and solemn Chippendalian chairs, with hands reposing upon the arms of them, ranged against the walls like Egyptian gods. The color of one of those figures, though faint in the gloom, was that of Miss Southwood’s gray velveteen, her ordinary afternoon dress, and therefore recognizable; but the others in masculine black clothes, with only a vague whiteness for their faces, were mysterious as Isis and Osiris; and so was a lady with her veil over her face, who sat at the other side of the fireplace, with the air of a chairwoman at a meeting, high and stately; though she caught a little of the pale afternoon daylight upon her, yet her dark dress and seal-skin coat and veil prevented any distinctness of revelation. In this correct and carefully arranged parlor there was one weak point. A woman who is without caprice is unworthy of being called a woman. Instead of herself occupying a Chippendale chair, and having her tea-tray placed upon the tall slender-limbed Queen Anne table, which stood in readiness against the wall, Mrs. Stone chose to make herself the one anachronism in the place. Her chair was a low one in front of the fire; her teatable was in proportion—a bit of debased nineteenth-century comfort in the midst of the stately grace which she professed to think so much more delightful. Why was this? It was Mrs. Stone’s pleasure, and there was no more to be said. She, with her pretty white cap upon her handsome head, seated at the feet of all her silent guests in their high chairs, was not only the central light in the picture, but a kind of humorous commentary upon it; but whether this proceeded from any sense of the joke in her, or was merely the expression of her own determination to please herself, were it even in flat rebellion to her own code, no one could tell.
“You are just in time,” she said, “Lucy and Katie, to give our friends some tea. Don’t interfere, Frank. I like girls to hand tea. It comes within their province; and it is a pretty office, which they do far more prettily than you can.”
“That I don’t dispute for a moment,” said a large round manly barytone, enthroned on high in one of the Chippendale chairs, “and I don’t deny that I like to be served by such hands when it is permitted.”
“That is one of the popular fallacies about women,” said Mrs. Stone, “and involves the whole question. Our weak surrender of our rights for the pleasure of being waited upon in public, was, I suppose, one of the consequences of chivalry. According to my theory, it is the business of women to serve. You shoot the birds or kill the deer, Mr. Rushton, as you best can, and we cook it and carve it, and serve it up to you.”
“If this beatitude depends upon my ability to kill the deer or shoot the birds, my dear lady!” said another good-natured voice, which added immediately, “Why, this is Lucy Trevor! I am very glad to see you. My dear, this is Lucy Trevor. Since she has been at the White House we have scarcely seen her. You girls are made too happy when you get under the charge of Mrs. Stone.”
“Is it you, Lucy?” said the lady with the veil; “come and speak to me, dear. I think it is a year since I have seen you. You have grown up, quite grown up in the time. How these young creatures change! A year does not make much difference in us; but this child has shot up! And Raymond—you remember your playfellow, Lucy—why, he is a man, as old as his father, giving us advice, if you please! It is something wonderful. I catch myself laughing out when I hear him discoursing about law. Raymond giving his opinion, my little boy, my baby! And I dare say little Lucy has begun to give her opinion, too.”
“Lucy is a very good girl,” said Mrs. Stone; “she never takes anything upon her. Katie now and then favors us with her ideas as to how the world should be governed.”
“That is right,” said Mr. Rushton, from the darker side. “I like to know what the young people think. It is they who will have it all in their hands one day.”