A VAN IN THE BRAIDWOOD ROAD.
One bright July morning, Mattie Drummond walked rapidly up the Braidwood Road, and, unlatching the green door in the wall, let herself into the large square hall of the vicarage. This morning it looked invitingly cool, with its summer matting and big wicker-work chairs; but Mattie was in too great haste to linger; she only stopped to disencumber herself of the various parcels with which she was ladened, and then she knocked at the door of her brother’s study, and, without waiting for the reluctant “Come in” that always answered her hasty rap, burst in upon him.
It was now three months since Mattie had entered upon her new duties, and it must be confessed that Archie’s housekeeper had rather a hard time of it. As far as actual management went, Mattie fully justified her mother’s eulogiums in her household 109 arrangements: she was orderly and methodical,—far more so than Grace would have been in her place; the meals were always punctual and well served, the domestic machinery worked well and smoothly. Archie never had to complain of a missing button or a frayed wrist-band. Nevertheless, Mattie’s presence at the vicarage was felt by her brother as a sore burden. There was nothing in common between them, nothing that he cared to discuss with her, or on which he wished to know her opinion; he was naturally a frank, outspoken man, one that demanded sympathy from those belonging to him; but with Mattie he was reticent, and as far as possible restrained in speech.
One reason for this might be that Mattie, with all her virtues,—and she was really a most estimable little person,—was sadly deficient in tact. She never knew when she was treading on other people’s pet prejudices. She could not be made to understand that her presence was not always wanted, and that it was as well to keep silence sometimes.
She would intrude her advice when it was not needed, in her good-natured way; she had always interfered with everything and everybody. “Meddlesome Mattie” they had called her at home.
She was so wonderfully elastic, too, in her temperament, that nothing long depressed her. She took all her brother’s snubbings in excellent part: if he scolded her at dinner-time, and made the ready tears come to her eyes,—for it was not the least of Mattie’s sins that she cried easily and on every possible occasion,—she had forgotten it by tea-time, and would chatter to him as happily as ever.
She was just one of those persevering people who seem bound to be snubbed; one cannot help it. It was as natural to scold Mattie as it was to praise other people; and yet it was impossible not to like the little woman, though she had no fine feelings, as Archie said, and was not thin-skinned. Grace always spoke a good word for her; she was very kind to Mattie in her way,—though it must be owned that she showed her small respect as an elder sister. None of her brothers and sisters respected Mattie in the least; they laughed at her, and took liberties with her, presuming largely on her good nature. “It is only Mattie; nobody cares what she thinks,” as Clyde would often say. “Matt the Muddler,” as Frederick named her.
“I wonder what Mattie would say if any one ever fell in love with her?” Grace once observed in fun to Archie. “Do you know, I think she would be all her life, thanking her husband for the unexpected honor he had done her, and trying to prove to him that he had not made such a great mistake, after all.”
“Mattie’s husband! He must be an odd sort of person, I should think.” And then Archie laughed, in not the politest manner. Certainly Mattie was not appreciated by her family. She was not looking her best this morning when she went into 110 her brother’s study. She wore the offending plaid dress,—a particular large black-and-white check that he thought especially ugly. Her hat-trimmings were frayed, and the straw itself was burnt brown by the sun, and her hair was ill arranged and rough, for she never wasted much time on her own person, and, to crown the whole, she looked flushed and heated.
Archie, who was sitting at his writing-table in severely-cut ecclesiastical garments, looking as trim and well-appointed a young clergyman as one might wish to see, might be forgiven for the tone of ill-suppressed irritation with which he said,—