Meantime they became, she and Gracie Dennis, more and more deeply interested in Mart. In her wardrobe first. “Wherever she lives she should have respectable clothing; thus much is easily settled.” So the matron decreed, and Gracie did not gainsay it. She became absorbed in preparing it. Such fascinating work! So many things were needed, and her skin was so delicate, and her eyes so blue, and Gracie's choice of shades and textures fitted her so precisely. Then, when dressed, simple though her toilet was, her remarkable beauty shone out so conspicuously as to alarm Mrs. Roberts whenever she thought of her in shop or store.
Several times during the weeks, she visited Sallie Calkins, and looked about her with a thoughtful air, and came away feeling that it would not do. There was Mark, growing into manhood, a good boy, hard-working, respectable, proud of his good, homely sister, and of his reformed father. The two rooms were taking on every sort of homely comfort that Sallie's skill, helped by Mrs. Roberts' suggestions, could devise. It was growing into a model little home in its way, but there was not a corner in it where Mart would fit.
Then, as the days passed, a subtle, fascinating change began to come over Mart. She slipped quietly into certain household duties. She showed marvellous skill with her needle; such skill, indeed, that Gracie Dennis said more than once: “I'll tell you, Flossy, what to do with her: put her in a good establishment, and let her learn the dressmaking trade. She could make her fortune in time.” And Mrs. Roberts smiled, and assented to the statement, but not to the proposition. There was no dressmaking establishment known to her where she was willing to place so young and pretty and ignorant a girl. But she was quite willing that Mart should learn the looping of dresses, and the fitting of sacks and collars and ruffles; and take many a stitch for her, as well as for Gracie. She was willing to have her do a dozen little nameless things, the ways of doing which she had caught up; until at last the touch of her fingers began to be felt about the rooms, and Mrs. Roberts began to notice that she should miss Mart when she went away. Still, from the first time she said this, the thought came afterward with a smile of satisfaction, and it was but a week afterward that she caught herself phrasing it, that she should miss her if she went away.
What about Dirk? Young Ried could have told you more of him during these days than anybody else. He still stayed at the boarding-house. Mrs. Saunders, the mistress of it, was one whom, if you had known her, you would feel sure could interest herself heartily in such as he. There was a bit of a room next to Ried's. To be sure, it had been used for a clothes-press, and it took the busy housekeeper half a day to plan how she could get along without it; but she planned, and offered it to Ried for his protégé.
“Just for the present, you know, until he sees what he can do, poor fellow,” she said, and Ried accepted the little room joyfully, and helped fit it up.
CHAPTER XXIX. — “WHAT IF I BELONGED?”
You think things are taking very rapid strides? Well, don't you know that there come periods when they do just that thing, or appear to? Why, even the buds on the trees teach us the lesson. How many springtimes have you gone to your bed feeling that the season was late, and the trees were bare, and the fruits would all be backward, and Nature was dawdling along in a very wearisome fashion; and awakened in the morning to find that there had in the night been a gentle rain, and a movement of mysterious power among the buds and the grasses, and that now, in the morning sunshine, the world had burst into bloom? Yet, did you really suppose, after all, that the work was done in one night?
There was progress of several sorts in the class at the South End. Even a casual observer could have seen a change in the boys that first Sunday after they had attended Dirk's mother to the grave. The dignity of that hour of sorrow was still upon them. Even the very reckless and world-hardened will offer a certain degree of respect to death. On ordinary occasions, the boys might have been merry at Dirk's expense, for they saw changes in him; but the memory of his mother's coffin kept them silent, and let his changed manner have its effect.