VIII
THE GRANDMA LADIES
Two weeks before Christmas Friendship was thrown into a state of holiday delight. Mrs. Proudfit and her daughter, Miss Clementina, issued invitations to a reception to be given on Christmas Eve at Proudfit House, on Friendship Hill. The Proudfits, who had rarely entertained since Miss Linda went away, lived in Europe and New York and spent little time in the village, but, for all that, they remained citizens in absence, and Friendship always wrote out invitations for them whenever it gave "companies." The invitations the postmaster duly forwarded to some Manhattan bank, though I think the village had a secret conviction that these were never received—"sent out wild to a bank in the City, so." However, now that old courtesies were to be so magnificently returned, every one believed and felt a greater respect for the whole financial world.
The invitations enclosed the card of Mrs. Nita Ordway, and the name sounded for me a note of other days when, before my coming to Friendship Village, we two had, in the town, belonged to one happy circle of friends.
"I thought at first mebbe the card'd got shoved in the envelope by mistake," said Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. "I know once I got a Christmas book from a cousin o' mine in the City, an' a strange man's card fell out o' the leaves. I sent the card right straight back to her, an' Cousin Jane seemed rill cut up, so I made up my mind I'd lay low about this card. But I hear everybody's got 'em. I s'pose it's a sign that it's some Mis' Ordway's party too—only not enough hers to get her name on the invite. Mebbe she chipped in on the expenses. Give a third, like enough."
However that was, Friendship looked on the Christmas party as on some unexpected door about to open in its path, and it woke in the morning conscious of expectation before it could remember what to expect. Proudfit House! A Christmas party! It touched every one as might some giant Santa Claus, for grown-ups, with a pack of heart's-ease on his back.
When Mrs. Ordway arrived in the village, the excitement mounted. Mrs. Nita Ordway was the first exquisitely beautiful woman of the great world whom Friendship had ever seen—"beautiful like in the pictures of when noted folks was young," the village breathlessly summed her up. To be sure, when she and her little daughter, Viola, rode out in the Proudfits' motor, nobody in the street appeared to look at them. But Friendship knew when they rode, and when they walked, and what they wore, and when they returned.
It was a happiness to me to see Mrs. Ordway again, and I sat often with her in the music room at Proudfit House and listened to her glorious voice in just the songs that I love. Sometimes she would send for her little Viola, so that I might sit with the child in my arms, for she was one of those rare children who will let you love them.
"I like be made some 'tention to," Viola sometimes said shyly. She was not afraid, and she would stay with me hour-long, as if she loved to be loved. She was like a little come-a-purpose spirit, to let one pretend.
A day or two after the invitations had been received, I was in my guest room going over my Christmas list. Just before Christmas I delight in the look of a guest room, for then the bed is spread with a brave array of pretty things, and when one arranges and wraps them, the stitches of rose and blue on flowered fabrics, the flutter of crisp ribbons, and the breath of sachets make one glad. I was lingering at my task when I heard some one below, and I recognized her voice.