True to a Type Volume I Part 6

"Yes, my dears," were her words as Rose joined the circle, "blue was always my colour. You see I am fair--'like a lily,' the young men used to tell me I was," and she made a flourish with her fan. "But that was years ago," and she blew a sigh which made her chest heave like a portly bellows. "And then I had a colour--like a Cheeny-rose, the haverels would have it; but the Scotch gentlemen are great hands to blaw in the lugs of silly girls. Not that I was ever the wan to let my head be turned with their nonsense--but still they had grounds for what they said."

"You were a beauty," said Lettice Deane--"I can see that;" and the girls exchanged glances br.i.m.m.i.n.g with amus.e.m.e.nt and incredulity, such as those feel whose bloom is still in the present tense, when one of the have-beens puts in her claim to personal charms.

"Yes, my dear, I was admired--in my day," and the double chin went up with a snap, to join the rest of the self-complacent countenance.

"Don't say was, Mrs Wilkie," Lettice answered. "You are a dangerous woman still. It is well that mamma is with us here, to look after the old man, or--or---- n.o.body knows what might happen. These old gentlemen are very susceptible."

"I don't think I am acquainted with your papaw, my dear," said the old woman, looking round the t.i.ttering circle with rising colour, and bridling as if the jest perhaps contained more truth than the scoffer wot of. "But I never was a flirt; and now, in my poseetion, one has to be careful, and set an example of propriety. But, as I was saying--and it's well for young people to know these things--you don't take proper care of yourselves in this country. You should see our Scotch complexions when we're young. Strawberries and crame--that's what we look like. But then we take a hantle care of our chairms; and we live healthy. It would be good for some Yankee girls if they were put through a course of proper conduck"--and she looked straight at Lucy Naylor, the most flagrant of the t.i.tterers--"and simple living, by one of our old Scotch grandmothers. You're for ever drinking icewater and hot tea, out here; and how can you expeck your insides to be healthy after that? And you're all the time at candies or pickles, not to speak of hot bread, and beef-steaks and pitaities for breakfast, as if ye had a day's ploughing before you--and you just lounging on soffies and easy-chairs the whole forenoon, with some bit silly novel in your hands, and nothing to exercise either the body or the intelleck. My son, the Deputy Minister of Edication, says you're just destroying yourselves."

"Tell us about _him_, dear Mrs Wilkie," said Lettice, cutting short the prelection. "We know our faults already, though I fear we are not likely to mend them. Tell us about the young man. That will be far more interesting. What do you call his profession? Something very long-winded and grand, I know."

"He is the Deputy Minister of Edication, for the Province. And it _is_ a grand poseetion for so young a man, or for any man--whatever you may think. And as for being 'long-winded,' you don't understand. He doesna preach, my dear--though he could do that too, if there was occasion.

It was that I bred him to. But this pays better. He has his handsome income for just sitting still in his chair and seeing that his inferiors work hard enough. And then, there's what the opposeetion papers, with their ill-sc.r.a.pet tongues, call pickin's! Oh yes! there's fine pickin's. But I mustna be telling tales out o' school."

"He must be a bishop, then, Mrs Wilkie, if he does not preach. We call boss ministers bishops. Do you call them deputies in Canada? How odd of you! And yet I danced with him last night. Think of dancing with a bishop! It sounds positively profane. What a country Canada must be!"

"The la.s.sie's in a creel! My Peter's no that kind of minister avaw. I _bred_ him for a minister, it's true--a minister of the Gospel, and very far from the same kind with your bishops, and their white gowns, and red things hanging down their backs. It's a U.P. he would have been, if I had had my way. But Peter preferred being a minister of the Crown; and there's no denying it _pays_ better. There's no vows laid on a minister of the Crown. They may dance, or do anything they like--and very queer things some of them do like, it seems to me. But Mis-ter Wilkie's very circ.u.mspeck. He's Deputy Minister, you see.

'Deputy' means that all the pickin's"--and she winked, poor soul--"go to _him_; though sometimes he has to give a share to the chief--quietly, you understand, my dears, for the chief is responsible to Parliament, and there would be a scandal if it came out. They're fond of having a scandal in Canada when politics are dull. Then the chief has to resign, but the deputy just sits still. He's a servant of the Crown, you see; so he goes on drawing his pay just the same, whatever chief the politeetians may appint over him. That comes of our having a Crown in Canada. It's a fine inst.i.tution, and troubles n.o.body. It would be telling you Yankees if you had wan. Ye wouldn't be turned out of your comfortable offices every four years, then; and more, it would keep you steady. Ye have no respeck and no reverence here, and no nothing;" and again she looked severely in Lucy Naylor's face--that ill-regulated young person having fallen a-laughing worse than ever.

"It must be nice to be married to a Deputy Minister of the Crown,"

Lettice observed, demurely.

"Ye may say that; and there's more than you thinks it, I can tell you, my dear. The young girls where we come from are just pulling caps to see who is to be the wan. It's really shameless the way they behave, and many's the good laugh me and Mis-ter Wilkie has at their ongoings."

"I suppose you are to choose the successful candidate?"

"A mother must know the kind that will suit her boay best. But it's a sore responsibeelity, my dears. It would be terrible if the expurriment didn't answer; and he's very hard to please, and terrible fond of his own way."

"Couldn't you say a good word for one of us here, dear Mrs Wilkie?"

asked Lettice with her most winning smile. "Just see what a lot of us there are!--and we have all to find husbands yet: every variety of girl you can think of--tall and short, dark and fair. Surely one of us might answer. It would be a gain to all. If one were provided for, the chance would be better, by so much, for all the rest when the next _parti_ came along."

"Peter must have intelleck, he says, and high culture. I'm fear'd ye wouldn't just answer, my dear--though you're a nice girl, I'll allow, and--well--and comely."

Lettice coloured to the temples, and her well-arched eyebrows contracted into something approaching to a frown. It is eminently provoking, when one fancies one has been rather successful in drawing out an oddity, and making sport, to find the tables suddenly turned, and one's self made the b.u.t.t.

"I was not thinking of myself," she said, and there was a tremor of crossness in her voice, which made her discomfiture more amusingly evident to the rest--"or any one else, for that matter. I know I would not take a gift of the fellow, with his washy grey eyes, and stiff priggish pomposity."

"The grapes are sour, my dear. Did you never hear tell of the story of the fox? But never you mind. There's a man appinted for you, I make no doubt; and if there is, ye'll get him, for as long as he is about appearing."

There was a scream of laughter, and Lettice, too angry to trust her voice with a retort, turned on her heel and went out, while the old lady sniffed vindictively and pursed her lips, as if she could have said much more, had the offender allowed her time.

"The impident monkey!" she muttered at last. "Does she think she is to make sport of _me_, without getting as good as she gives?" "That's a forward girl," she added aloud. "It isn't becoming for a young woman to be putting in for a gentleman in that barefaced way. And ye needn't laugh, my dears; some of you are not much better. As for Mis-ter Wilkie, ye may keep your minds easy; he can get better than any of you where we come from, just for the raising of his finger."

"Poor Lettice!" said Rose. "Are you not a little hard on her? I am sure she did not mean to be provoking."

"If _you_ say that, my dear, I am willing to suppose it. But really, I'm just bothered with young girrls trying to catch my son, every place I go. It's like the way bees come bizzing round a sugar-bowl; or wasps, I might say," and she flung an angry glance at Lucy Naylor, caught laughing again. "You are the young lady, if I'm not mistaken, that saved the man's life this morning? It was a n.o.ble ack; and you're an example to us women, that are more given to hang about a man till he sinks, than to bear him up when he's in trouble. You'll be staying here, like the rest of us?"

"Yes; I am here with Mrs Deane and her daughter."

"That girrl that was so impertinent to me just now?--pretending to c.o.c.k her nose at a Deputy Minister! Set her up!"

"Miss Deane is an heiress and a beauty. All the men in Chicago were wild about her last winter. She did not mean to offend you, I am sure; though perhaps she is a little spoilt by all the attention she receives."

"An heiress, is she? And these will all be heiresses too, maybe?

They're forward and saucy enough for that or anything," she added, tossing her head at the retiring figures trooping away to overtake Lettice, and leaving the old woman, whose good-humour they had worn out, standing alone with Rose. "If it was you, now, I would be proud to hear that ye were an heiress, and to know you. Ye've got spurrit; and I'm sure ye have sense as well as good looks. Ye're not so young as thae light-headed tawpies, with their empty laughs, that have gone out just now, but you're just in your prime."

"I am five-and-twenty," said Rose, with a twinkle of dawning mischief.

"That's within two years of the age I was myself when I was married.

It would be just one like you that I could welcome to my bosom, for a daughter," and she looked graciously in the other's face, to accept the answering look of grat.i.tude which she felt was her due. "It's a sore responsibeelity, I can tell you, to a right-thinking mother, to get her only son--and _such_ a son!--properly settled in life. They've no sense, even the best of men, when it comes to choosing a wife.

There's a glamour comes over them, and they just fall a prey to some designing cuttie that has nothing but the duds she stands in, and neither sense nor experience. But I mean to stand between my boay and that misfortune, at any rate."

"He must feel deeply indebted to you."

"I don't know if he does, my dear. The men are contrar' cattle, and very thrawn. But I have my duty to do. He's my objeck in life. I left home to come out and live with him in a foreign land; and that was no small sacrifice at my time of life, I can tell you. It's true he has a fine piseetion and a good income; but if ye had seen the way he was being put upon, and the waste, when I came out to look after him, it would have made your hair stand up. A whole peck of pitaities biled every day for wan man's dinner! The cook's mother kept pigs, ye see.

That's where the pitaities went. But I made a cleen sweep, I can tell you."

"It must have been rather trying to you."

"Eh yes! it's been very hard upon my nerves. I'm not strong; though perhaps ye wouldn't think it. My colour's so good that n.o.body will believe there's much the matter with me. But my heart's aff.e.c.ket, my dear. If you could just feel the palpitations--thump--thump--like a smiddie hammer! ever since thae girrls with their jawing went out,"--and she laid her hand upon her ample chest and closed her eyes.

"How distressing! Does your medical man give you hopes of getting over it?"

"That's in Higher Hands, my dear. We are trying the eff.e.c.ks of sea-air on my complaint, just now. That's what has brought us all the way down from Ontario. The doctor thinks I want bracing, and he gives me poothers to take. You see, it's h.o.m.oeopathy we are trying. And that 'minds me: this is my time for a poother. What can have come over Peter that he isn't here to give me it?"

"Can you not take your powder yourself?"

"No; it's small and delicate, and not easy to apply. The doctor ordered it to be sprinkled on the tongue. I wish Peter was here. The thoughtless rascal!"

"On the tongue? How odd! Do you think I could do it for you?"

"My dear, if you would! Ye're a dear lamb, and ye'll be a treasure to any mother-in-law that gets you."

"Have you the powder?"

"I carry them about with me, to prevent accidents, when I'm living in a strange house. The maids might be for tasting them, ye see, and n.o.body knows what might happen."

Mrs Wilkie sat down in a chair facing the window, handed a tiny parcel to Rose, and stretched out her feet in front, while she laid back her head, grasping the chair-arms, shutting her eyes tight, and opening her mouth wide to display the flat red tongue. It was a moment of tension with her; she was stretched to her utmost, holding her breath, and with every muscle tightened in expectant rigidity.

Rose opened the parcel, which contained a pinch of white powder, and proceeded to administer; but the appearance of the patient was so comic that she had to forbear while calming her risible inclinations, lest her hand should shake and the precious remedy fall on a wrong place. At length she felt steady, and began to sprinkle as directed.

But the sprinkling took time. The powder was to be evenly scattered over the member, or evil results would ensue; and meanwhile the patient was holding in her breath. She clutched the chair-arms, and strove valiantly; but nature gave way at length. Just as the last flake descended to its place, the imprisoned wind broke loose with a mighty sigh; a white cloud ascended between herself and Rose, while the outstretched jaws relaxed and came together; she opened her eyes and sat up, but the "poother" was scattered on the viewless air, and the old lady had little h.o.m.oeopathy that morning.

CHAPTER IX.

BETWEEN FRIENDS.