The upper rooms were far less imposing, and thus better suited to the smaller purse and household of the elder sister, Mrs. Honora Plum. This poor lady endured much from the companionship of a stepdaughter, ill-tempered and idle, and reflecting the blaze of an ancient escutcheon stained by vice, for Mrs. Plum had married the younger son of a titled English gentleman.
Nothing of the regret from which she must have suffered ever passed her lips, and her patient smile sweetened the loaf which she so generously shared with the woman whose only claim was the name she bore.
Mrs. Mountain’s past, on the contrary, was delightful to contemplate. A happy marriage in early life shed a halo over even the long illness and death of a beloved husband; but neither this break in the tide of joy, nor the sorrows of Honora, ever darkened the light of true sister love that doubled their present portion of helpfulness and cheer.
Both ladies were short and dark, with large brown eyes which never lost their sparkle, and well-formed lips that kept a rosy color into late years.
Fashion forever stamps some part of Nature’s work as reprehensible, and at the period of which I write, the gray locks that represent intensity of feeling as often as age were considered unfit to be seen by the world. So the heavy silken bands that graced the brows of both sisters were closely covered with beribboned caps, and bordered with “false fronts” of dusky hair, coiled on each side over two small combs, forming stiff and ungainly puffs that did not seem to belong to the little women, but to which they were so much attached that one never admitted the other to her chamber until the structure was erected, or a huge nightcap entirely concealed the absence of it.
Far more suitable would have been the simplicity of the Friend’s costume, which bore a wondrous charm for them, as the dress of their beloved mother. But the sisters had wandered from the fold, each had married “out of meeting” and thereby forfeited her birthright membership; and having renounced the worship of their fathers, they also felt it incumbent to robe themselves somewhat according to the fashion of the world’s people, but the “Stranger” air which marked their devotions before a “hireling ministry” also clung to their garments.
It was a little pitiful, this estrangement from their early religious associations, and perchance it might have been their greatest pleasure to return to the fold when the days of their widowhood came, but the meeting was held in a remote district of the township, and neither of the sisters was robust. For this reason they made a church home in the nearest house of worship, and carried thither so much of their elementary religion as wrought daily miracles of love and patience.
They were charitable to a degree almost beyond praise, and the fine bearing, the impressive presence of the little pair, could have come from nothing else than a realization of noble attributes.
The annals of New York indeed would be incomplete without mention of the exceeding service rendered the State in time of need by a rich Quaker, who steadfastly refused any public recognition, but whose death was everywhere heralded as that of a man combining in his character modesty and rare worth.
Perhaps it was the consciousness of being heir to these virtues that led Honora into a false conception of the inheritance of her husband, but the painful knowledge of her error never lessened her understanding of the motto “Noblesse oblige.”