"I am stopping with my aunt, Miss Wardrop, at thirteen Washington Square, North. If you and I are to go into the harness business together, I hope you will come—and bring your price lists and things, won't you?"
"Thank you. I will surely come," the underwriter answered simply.
It was not until she found herself once more mounting the steps of her aunt's house that Miss Maitland recollected the lamp shade.
CHAPTER X
There have been in half a century many and significant changes in Washington Square. Of the buildings that defied time fifty years ago, not many remain. On the East especially, where Waverley Place—once more picturesquely called Rag Carpet Lane—links the Square to Broadway, the traditional brick structures have all been replaced by modern loft-buildings, almost as sober but far less austere. Elsewhere around the Square the old-time residences only here and there survive, encroached upon more and more by the inroads of modernity. Only along Washington Square North, east and west of Fifth Avenue, has there been consistent and effective resistance to the tidal march of progress; and it was east of the Avenue and in the immediate shadow of the New that Miss Mary Wardrop had lived for more than three generations.
Now there remained only three of what must not long ago have been a considerable community—those that dwelt on Washington Square at the time when Central Park was being made or when Lincoln called for a quarter of a million volunteers and in prompt and patriotic answer the Northern regiments passed through cheering crowds down Broadway.
Miss Wardrop herself, being by far the most dominant of the three, shall be mentioned first. The second was her ancient butler, whose surname—and apparently his only name—was Jenks, which was always pronounced with ever so slight a tendency toward him of the Horse Marines. And the third, who, like Miss Wardrop, still retained possession of the family mansion, was Mr. Augustus Lispenard, bachelor, aged—in the morning—nearly eighty, although later in the day, when the ichor in his veins began to course more briskly, his appearance was that of an uncommonly well-preserved man of sixty or thereabouts. His residence adjoined that of Miss Wardrop, but there had never been any intimacy between the two households. For this there were a number of reasons, but the paramount one was the fact that Mr. Lispenard was descended from one of the oldest houses among the Knickerbockers, and as such it was extremely difficult for him to become aware of any one not sprung with equal selectness. The Wardrops had arrived on the Square at the comparatively recent period of Miss Mary's babyhood—and even now Miss Mary was only sixty or so.
Miss Helen Maitland remembered very well the occasion of her first meeting with the distinguished personage who lived next door. It had occurred on the first visit she had made her aunt, when she was but a small girl, yet Helen had found few things in after years to etch themselves more sharply upon her recollection. It had been in the holiday season, and, Helen's mother having been sent South by the inclemencies of the Boston weather, the child had been left with Miss Wardrop over the Christmas time. On New Year's Day, wide-eyed, she had beheld the elaborate, old-world, decorous preparations made by Jenks under the eye of his mistress, and with delight she had learned that, while she could not—nor indeed did she wish to—attend the New Year's reception herself, she was to be allowed a seat of vantage above stairs where part, and the most interesting part, of the reception hall lay open to her view.
Miss Wardrop rigidly preserved the old custom as to New Year's calls—preserved even the old blue punch-bowl, which Jenks filled with a decoction of haunting and peculiar excellence; and the dress wherein the hostess received had done duty on more New Years' Days than its owner liked always to recall.
Peering down through the mahogany railings that fenced her eyrie from the world, the youthful Miss Maitland had watched, starry-eyed, a function which in essentials had not altered in very many years. Its hostess had grown more gray, but no less alert, had changed in years more than in age. And it was with a courtly bow, which also had not varied in angle or courtliness, that little Miss Maitland saw Mr. Augustus Lispenard bend low over Miss Wardrop's hand.