CHAPTER VI

The two Misses Graham were very much interested in their real-estate agent.

"A girl, to be in business," said the younger sister, doubtfully.

"It's very nice in her," said the elder sister. "I suppose the Paytons have lost their money and she has to support the family."

"She is certainly capable," Miss Mary admitted. "But it does seem strange for her to work in this way, when she could give music lessons, for instance."

"Perhaps she's not musical," Miss Eliza objected. "I hate to have a girl pounding the piano, when her talent lies in scrubbing floors." Miss Eliza Graham looked like a frayed old eagle; perhaps because for seventy years she had flapped unavailing wings against the Graham traditions.

Those traditions had kept her from the serious study of music, and later they had "saved" her from marriage with a man who had very little money. The younger Miss Graham looked, and was, as contented as a pouter-pigeon teetering about in a comfortable barn-yard. It was Miss Eliza, tall, thin, piercing-eyed, and sweet-hearted at seventy-two, who had, as she expressed it,[Pg 73] "dug Mary up," and brought her to town for the winter. Miss Eliza was for a hotel, but Miss Mary felt that unmarried ladies should have the dignity of their own roof. "We can always have the escort of a messenger-boy, if we go out in the evening," she told her sister, who agreed, her eyes twinkling.

"Excellent idea. We can spank him if he doesn't behave properly!"

"Oh, my dear Eliza!" Miss Mary protested, but she smiled indulgently. Eliza was the most precious thing in the world to the little, plump lady who made endless excuses to herself, and to everybody else, for "dear Eliza's ways." It was a "way" of Eliza's to forgive Youth for almost anything it did....

"Of course, Youth makes Age uncomfortable," she would concede. "New wine is very hard on old bottles! But if the bottles burst, it isn't the fault of the wine, it is the fault of the bottles—for having been empty!" The significance of those last words was quite lost on Miss Mary.

As the two sisters went over their little apartment, and discovered its possibilities, old Miss Eliza's interest centered in the youth as well as the sex of their real-estate agent. "Look at that wood-box!" she said;—"to think of a girl having so much gumption!"

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Mary—and pointed a shrinking finger at the stub of a cigarette on the parlor windowsill, "I thought I smelt smoke; a workman must have left it."

But the cigarette was the only fly in the ointment. The[Pg 74] apartment, with its "art" finishings, electricity, and steam-heat, was to the country ladies and their one elderly maidservant a miracle of beauty and convenience.

"Arthur was wonderfully wise in asking Miss Payton to attend to it for him," Miss Eliza said.

"I wonder if—it means anything?" Miss Mary queried, with an arch look. "After all, he must know her very well, to have told her just what we wanted—rooms and bath, and all that. It is rather intimate, you know."

"I hope it means something! I hope he has got over that wicked jilt, Kate Morrison!"

"Well, the Paytons are nice people," the younger sister said; "she was a Holmes, you know."

They were both eager to see dear Arthur and Miss Payton, for they felt sure they would know the moment they saw them together whether he had "got over" Kate. "When people are in love they always betray it," said Miss Eliza.

But when Mr. Weston brought Miss Frederica Payton to call, no "love" was betrayed on either side. In fact, the call was such an astonishing experience to the two sisters that they quite forgot their sentimental wonderings. Frederica accepted their thanks and appreciation very pleasantly, but a little bluntly. Oh, yes, the sunshine in the dining-room was very nice; she was glad they liked it. But she hoped they'd survive the jig-saw over-mantel and the awful tiles in the parlor. "They made me pretty sick," she said.

"Why, I thought the mantelpiece very artistic," Miss Mary said, blankly.

[Pg 75]

"The porcelain bath-tub is dandy," Fred said, with real pride.

"Dandy?" murmured Miss Eliza.

"It made me feel as if I could hardly wait for Saturday night to take a bath," the Real Estate Agent said. The two ladies looked startled—not at the antique joke, but to refer to bathing in Arthur's presence! "I mean the tub is bully," Fred explained; "and the plumbing—" Here she became so specific that her modest old clients grew quite red. She had been obliged to get a plumber in to work on the trap the afternoon before they came, but she was sure everything was all right now.

The door-bell rang at this moment, and while the Misses Graham, breathless under the shock of Miss Payton's thoroughness, welcomed (of all people!) old Mrs. Holmes, Fred was able to groan to Arthur Weston, "Can't we get out?"

"We cannot," he said, decidedly; "now brace up and be nice to your grandmother."

"Oh, Lord!" said Fred; but she was really very nice. She pecked at Mrs. Holmes's cheek through its white lace veil, and said "Hello, Grandma! How is anti-suffrage?" as politely as possible.

Of course, to make things pleasant for Mrs. Holmes, the Misses Graham repeated all their appreciation of Miss Freddy's efficiency. "She will make an admirable housekeeper," Miss Mary said, in her gentle way.

"She ought to," said Frederica's grandmother. "I'm sure I brought her mother up to know how to keep house! But it is just a fancy of Freddy's to do this sort of thing;"[Pg 76] she waved a knuckly white glove at the apartment, which caused Frederica to roll her eyes at Mr. Weston. "Of course, I know it isn't done, but it's an amusement for her," Mrs. Holmes explained, "and I have so much sympathy with young people—my daughter says I am all heart!—that I love to have the child amuse herself."

She was trying to preserve the Payton dignity, but she was very nervous; she could have said it all so much better if that pert creature had not been sitting there, her knees crossed, and displaying a startling length of silk stocking. She knew that no sense of propriety would keep Fred quiet if she took it into her head to contradict anybody, and she was glad when the two ladies changed the subject, even though it was for the gunpowdery topic of suffrage, on which, it appeared, the younger Miss Graham had strong feelings.

"I am sure female influence is not only more refining, but more effective than the ballot could possibly be," she said.

Of course Fred rushed in: "You're an anti?"

"Yes, my dear," Miss Mary said, smiling.

"To get things done by 'influence' is to revert, it seems to me, to the methods of the harem," said Fred, earnestly. Frederica was never flippant on this vital topic of suffrage, unless she was angry. Her grandmother's retort supplied the anger:

"Woman's charm will always outweigh woman's ballot," said Mrs. Holmes, with smiling decision. (She, too, was getting hot inside.)

"The antis," Fred flung back, "think that all that[Pg 77] is necessary is to 'sit on the stile, and continue to smile'!"

"What did you say?" said Mrs. Holmes, frowning. "Young people speak so indistinctly nowadays! We were taught proper enunciation when I was young."

"Woman," said Miss Mary, raising her voice, "is a princess, but her God-given rule lies in the gentle domain of the home."

"Gosh!" said Fred—and two of her auditors laughed explosively. But Frederica was red with wrath. "I've seen the 'princess' exercising her God-given rule in cleaning the floors of saloons on her hands and knees, because she had to support the children that her husband had foisted on her and then deserted. Do you think under such 'gentle circumstances' her charm would do as much for her as a vote?"

One does not know just how much of an explosion there would have been if the elder Miss Graham had not come to the rescue: "Ah, well, there are so many good reasons on both sides, that I'm glad I don't have to decide it!" Then she began to talk of old friends in Grafton; but, alas, as a subject Grafton, too, was somewhat dangerous; old Mr. So-and-so died two years ago; and Mrs. Black—did Mrs. Holmes remember Mrs. Black? "I am sorry to say she is very ill," Miss Mary said. The chatter of gossip was—as it so often is with age—a rehearsal of sickness and death. In the midst of it Mrs. Holmes clutched at a gold mesh-bag that was slipping from her steep lap, and tried to rise:

"I think I must go. (Oh, do pick up that bag, Freddy[Pg 78] dear.) I am too tender-hearted," she confessed, "I can't bear to hear unpleasant things!"

"Well, let us talk of pleasant things," Miss Eliza said; but she looked at the frightened old face under the white veil;—"and 'the feet of the bearers' are coming nearer to her every day!" she thought.

Mrs. Holmes sat down again, reluctantly. Of course, from the Misses Graham's point of view, there could be nothing pleasanter for a grandmother to hear than plaudits of Miss Freddy's efficiency; so they went back again to that. Dear Arthur had told them how hard she had worked (again Freddy's eyes rolled toward dear Arthur); engaging tradesmen, and making the landlord do the necessary repairing.—"Oh, my dear," Miss Mary interrupted herself, "I meant to warn you that one of your workmen left a half-smoked cigarette here. I knew you would want to reprove him. Dear me! in these days, with all the new ideas, the working-people are very careless. But I feel so strongly our responsibility to them, that I always tell them of their mistakes."

"The working-people didn't make any mistake this time," Fred said; "you mustn't blame the plumber,"—the temptation to get back at her grandmother was too much for her—"it was my own cigarette." There was a stunned silence. "Howard Maitland and I were smoking here quite a while," she said, sweetly. "But I thought I'd aired the room out. I'm awfully sorry,—cigarette-smoke does hang about so." ("'Amusement'!" she was saying to herself; "I'll 'amuse' her!")

But Mrs. Holmes was equal to the occasion. She shook[Pg 79] an arch and knobby finger at her granddaughter. "Naughty girl! But that's one of the things that is done nowadays," she said; "ladies smoke just as much as gentlemen, don't they, Mr. Weston?"

"More," he declared, gayly; but he watched his two cousins. Had they taken it in that Maitland and Fred had been in the flat together? It had apparently not struck Mrs. Holmes—or if it had, she chose to ignore it; she was talking, with a very red face, about all sorts of things. It seemed a favorable moment to drag his candid ward away, and he did so, with effusive promises to come again soon—all the time looking out of the corner of his eye at the Misses Graham's farewell to Fred. Alas, Miss Mary's were hardly visible.

But Miss Eliza followed them into the hall, and put a hand on Fred's arm: "I don't mind the smell of smoke in a room half as much as I do on a girl's lips," she said, smiling; "they ought to be like roses." Then she gave the angular young arm a little pat and ran back.

"What a duck she is!" Fred said, honestly moved; "I wish I hadn't let out at Grandmother!"

Her repentance did not soothe Arthur Weston. "I'd like to shake you," he said, as they got into the elevator.

"Me? What's your kick? I thought I behaved beautifully! I kissed an inch of powder off Grandmother's cheek. There's no satisfying you. I supposed you'd give me a bunch of violets, with 'For a good girl,' on the card. Don't be an old maid! Even Miss Graham isn't. She's a dear!"

"I may be an old maid, but you are an imp!" he said. In the taxi, as they rushed, with open windows, across the[Pg 80] city back to Payton Street, he spoke more gravely. "You ought not to have gone wandering around in vacant apartments with Maitland." He was really annoyed, and showed it.

Frederica was equally annoyed. "I am a business woman. Howard was obliging enough to take me around in his car. In the flat we talked for a while. Why shouldn't we? If he had been a girl, I suppose we could have sat there until midnight and you would have never peeped!"

"But may I call your attention to the fact that he's not a girl?"

"May I call your attention to the fact that there is such a thing, between men and women, as intellectual relations?" She was getting angry, and her anger betrayed her self-consciousness.

"You compel me," he retorted, "to remind you that there are other relations between men and women which are not markedly intellectual."

"There're none of that kind in mine, thank you! I—"

But he interrupted her, dryly: "Of course you know you had no business to do it. You remind me, Fred, of one of those dirty little boys who put a firecracker under your chair to make you jump. Look here, it's unworthy of a 'business woman' to do unconventional things simply because they are unconventional."

"I didn't!"

"You are like all the rest of your sex—self-conscious as hens when they see an automobile coming! You knew it was queer to shut yourself up there with that darned[Pg 81] fool, Maitland, and that's why you loved doing it," he flung at her. "That's the trouble with women nowadays; not that they do unusual things, but they are so blamed pleased to be unusual! And if they only knew it, they don't shock a man at all. They only bore him to death."

"I—"

"But I suppose you can't help it; you are so atrociously young," he ended, sighing.

Frederica was almost too angry to speak. "I am old enough to do as I choose!"

"Only Youth does as it chooses," he told her. "Reflect upon what I have said, my dear infant, and profit by it.... Stop at the iron dog!" he called to the driver. And the next minute Frederica, buffeted by the high, keen wind, ran past the dog, whose back was ridged with grimy snow, and, holding on to her hat with one hand, let herself into the hall with her latch-key.

"What's the matter with him?" she thought, slamming the front door behind her; "it isn't his funeral!"