Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

“Well, I don’t know,” returned Mattie, bluntly: “as far as I am concerned, I am never ashamed of any honest calling. What do you say, Archie?”

“I say it is all very proper and laudable,” he returned, hesitating; “but surely—surely there must be some other way more suitable to ladies in your position! Let me call again when your mother comes, and see if there is nothing that I can do or recommend better than this. Yes, I am sure if I can only talk to your mother, we could find some other way than this.”

“Indeed, Mr. Drummond, you must do nothing of the kind,” replied Phillis, in an alarmed voice: “the poor dear mother must not be disturbed by any such talk! You mean it kindly, but we have made up our own minds, Nan and I: we mean to do without the world and live in one of our own; and we mean to carry out our plan in defiance of everything and everybody; and, though you are our clergyman and we are bound to listen to your sermons, we cannot take your advice in this.”

“But—but I would willingly act as a friend,” began the young man, confusedly, looking not at her, but at Nan.

He was so bewildered, so utterly taken aback, he hardly knew what he said.

“Here comes Dorothy with the tea,” interrupted Nan, pleasantly, as though dismissing the subject: “she has not forgotten our old customs. Friends always came around us in the afternoon. Mr. Drummond, perhaps you will make yourself useful and cut the cake. Dorothy, you need not have unpacked the best silver teapot.” Nan was moving about in her frank hospitable way. Laddie was whining for cake, and breaking into short barks of impatience. “This is one of our Glen Cottage cakes. Susan always prides herself on the recipe,” said Nan, calmly, as she pressed it on her guests.

Mr. Drummond almost envied his sister as she praised the cake and asked for the recipe. He had always found fault with her manners; but now nothing could be finer than her simplicity. Pure good nature and innate womanliness were teaching Mattie something better than tact. Nan had dropped a painful subject, and she would not revive it in her brother’s 138 presence. There would be plenty of time for her to call and talk it over with them quietly. Help them!—of course she would help them. They should have her new silk dress that Uncle Conway had just sent her. It was a risk, for perhaps they might spoil it; but such fine creatures should have a chance. At present she would only enjoy the nice tea, and talk to poor little frightened Dulce, who seemed unable to open her lips after her sister’s disclosure.

Archie could not emulate her ease: a man is always at a disadvantage in such a case. His interest had sustained no shock: it was even stimulated by what he had just heard; but his sympathy seemed all at once congealed, and he could find no vent for it. In spite of his best efforts his manner grew more and more constrained every moment.

Nan looked at him more than once with reproachful sweetness. She thought they had lost caste in his eyes; but Phillis, who was shrewd and sharp-set in her wits, read him more truly. She knew—having already met a score of such—how addicted young Englishmen are to mauvaise honte, and how they will hide acute sensibilities under blunt and stolid exteriors; and there was a certain softness in Mr. Drummond’s eye that belied his stiffness. Most likely he was very sorry for them, and did not know how to show it; and in this she was right.

Mr. Drummond was very sorry for them; but he was still more grieved for himself. The Oxford fellow had not long been a parish priest, and he could not at all understand the position in which he found himself,—taking tea with three elegant young dressmakers who talked the purest English and had decided views on tennis and horticulture. He had just been congratulating himself on securing such companionship for his sister and himself. Being rather classical-minded, he had been calling them the gray-eyed Graces, and one of them at least “a daughter of the gods,—divinely tall and most divinely fair;” for where had he seen anything to compare with Nan’s bloom and charming figure? Dressmakers!—oh, if only Grace were at hand, that he might talk to her, and gain her opinion how he was to act in such case! Grace had the stiff-necked Drummond pride as well as he, and would hesitate long behind the barriers of conventionality. No wonder, with all these thoughts passing through his mind, that Nan, with her bright surface talk, found him a little vague.