Butter and cheese and preserves must save the day! “Get you a combernation,” Hiram Nute was always saying, “but don’t get anything but what folks really want.” I was thankful that I had not been led away by any frivolities of art. I had my own high opinion of the artistic excellence of my tidies and my crystallized grasses, but I had no idea that they would sell. Clearly, I was more sensible than the others.
Ah, me! frankness is painful, for who is there who can frankly write out the past and not write himself down a fool?
It was Saturday, a school holiday, and Octavia was in her room hard at work, I knew, on “Evelyn Marchmont.” Now on that day I had but little faith in “Evelyn Marchmont.” I felt that it would be a very great thing if Octavia could write a book. No one in Palmyra had ever written a book! When the Centennial exercises of the church were printed in book form and the poem that Emmeline Luce had written for the occasion appeared in large type and with her name in full, we felt that all Palmyra was honored by having a poet in its midst, and we looked curiously at Emmeline to see how she bore her garland of fame. Before it had withered, I knew that many original poems were sent from Palmyra to the local papers, and even to more ambitious publications. But it is probable that they all shared the fate of Octavia’s stories; they all came back like fledglings to the nest; for none of them ever appeared in print, and Palmyra had never given another poet to the world. Emmeline married and went West to live, and when her husband died, a few years after her marriage, we heard of her as taking boarders to support herself.
But although Fame’s little day was over for Emmeline, and there had been no evident results of it in Palmyra, yet I was sure that Octavia’s literary efforts dated from that time. She was more persevering than the other aspirants for literary success had been; whether this argued greater literary talent or not, I could not judge, “Evelyn Marchmont” was the “fine, consummate flower” of effort, whether it might be that of genius or not.
But on that day I could not think hopefully of “Evelyn Marchmont.” Emmeline’s boarders lay heavily on my mind. Practical necessities do so sadly change one’s sense of values in this world. And I felt myself to be the only one in the family who had a really practical mind. Butter and board! those were things that people really wanted, I reasoned, a la Hiram Nute.
So when Octavia called me I went reluctantly to the reading of “Evelyn Marchmont.” Octavia did not think me a competent critic; one’s limitations seldom fail to be recognized by one’s brothers and sisters; but she had a longing for sympathy, and wished some practical ideas on the subject as well.
“Perhaps you represent the average reading public, Bathsheba dear,” she said, candidly. “Not over-cultivated, you don’t mind my saying that, do you? when you have such a beautiful domesticity and are so capable and helpful.”
But I did wince. I had a feeling that the writers of books and painters of pictures thought scornfully of my “beautiful domesticity.” And who wishes to be called not over-cultivated in these days? So I was not in the best of humors for the reading of Octavia’s novel, and yet I became enthusiastic before she reached the end. It seemed to me very clever and interesting, and, moreover, the scene was laid in very fashionable society. I couldn’t understand how Octavia could know so much about it, and her knowledge filled me with admiration.
Octavia had been to Gobang once for a visit, in the winter, and Gobang was the gay and fashionable city of our county; and she had been to Bar Harbor—and every one knows how fashionable that is—with Uncle Horace and Rob. But they stayed only a few days, for the air did not agree with Rob, as it had been hoped that it would.
Now, when a girl has made only such little journeys as these from Palmyra into the world, one does not really expect her to write a society story, but that was what Octavia had done, and as I listened I felt like pinching myself to be sure that I was Bathsheba Dill of Groundnut Hill Farm, with a sister who taught a kindergarten! It occurred to me that if the little old woman on the king’s highway had had a sister of whom she was forced to cry,