What was a woman to do who had managed her own household with a high hand for more than thirty years, thus unceremoniously taken by storm? She turned her gaze from Dorothy to Louise, and stood regarding her for a second, as if in no doubt what to say; then, with a bitterness of tone that Louise did not in the least understand, said—
"Do just exactly what you please; which I guess is what you are in the habit of doing, without asking permission."
Then she dashed into the outer kitchen, and set up such a clatter with the pots and kettles there that she surely could not have overheard a word had many been said.
Louise, with honest heart, desiring to do what was right, was by no means infallible, and yet was quick-witted she discovered that she had blundered. It flashed before her that Mother Morgan thought she was trying to rule the household and reorganize the home society—trying, indeed, to put her, the mother, aside. Nothing had been further from her thoughts. She stood transfixed for a moment, the rich blood rolling in waves over her fair face at thought of this rude repulse of her cheery effort to play that she was at home and act accordingly. It was as Dorothy said: she was so accustomed to the familiar sentence, "Come in and take tea," that it fell from her lips as a matter of course; especially had she been one of those trained to a cordial heartiness as regarded her pastor. Her invitation to Mr. Butler had been unpremeditated, and, she now believed, unwise. Yet how strange a sense of loneliness and actual homesickness swept over her as she realized this. How difficult it was to step at all! How she must guard her words and her ways; how sure she might be of giving offence when nothing in her past experience could foreshadow such an idea to her! Was it possible that in her husband's home she was not to feel free to extend hospitalities when and where she chose? Could she ever hope to grow accustomed to such a trammelled life? She stood still in the spot where her mother-in-law had transfixed her—the dust-pan balanced nicely, that none of its contents might escape; the broom being swayed back and forth slowly by a hand that trembled a little; the fair, pink-trimmed cambric sweeping-cap, that was so becoming to her, and so useful in shielding her hair from dust, heightening now the flush on her face. If she had but known it, in the new mother's eyes that sweeping-cap was one of her many sins.
"The idea of prinking up in a frilled cap to sweep!" had that lady exclaimed, the first time she saw it, and she drove the coarse comb through her thin gray hair as she spoke, regardless of the fact that much dust had settled in it from that very morning's sweeping.
"It keeps her hair clean, I'm sure," had Dorothy interposed; "and you are always for keeping things most dreadfully clean."
"Clean!" had the mother exclaimed, vexed again, at she hardly knew what; "so will a good washing in soap and water, and look less ridiculous besides. What do you catch me up in that way for whenever I say anything? Attend to the dishes, and don't waste your time talking about hair; and if you ever stick such a prinked-up thing on your head as that, I'll box your ears."
What could there have been in the little pink cap to have driven the mother into such a state? She rarely indulged in loud-voiced sentences. It was unfortunate for Louise that this episode had occurred but a short time before; and it was fortunate for her that she did not and could not guess what the innocent cap, made by Estelle's deft fingers, had to do with Mrs. Morgan's state of mind. Had she known that such a very trifle had power over the new mother's nerves, it might have appalled her. We grieve sometimes that we cannot know other people's hearts, and foresee what would please and what would irritate. Sometimes in our blindness we feel as if that certainly would have been the wiser way; yet I doubt if Louise's courage would not have utterly forsaken her could she have seen the heart of her husband's mother as she rattled the pots and kettles in the outer kitchen. Hearts calm down wonderfully sometimes; what need then to know of their depths while at boiling-point? But what sights must the all-seeing God look down upon—sights, in tenderness, shut away from the gaze of his weak children.
Poor Louise! It was such a little thing, and she felt so ashamed for allowing herself to be ruffled. Several states of feeling seemed knocking for admittance. She almost wished that she could go to that outer kitchen and slam the door after her, and set the dust-pan down hard before the cross lady, and say to her,—
"There! take your broom and your dust-pan, and do your own sweeping up in John's room after this, and let Lewis and me go home to mother. You are not a mother at all; the name does not fit you. I know what the word means; I have had a mother all my life, and I begin to think Lewis has never had."