Cicely and Other Stories Part 8

Claribel's plans did not put themselves into practical shape so readily. For days she went about with a preoccupied air. There was some mysterious correspondence that Agnes wondered over, many hours spent in her room with locked doors. Then one day she stole down the stately stairway with a little valise in her hands.

"You needn't look at me in that way," she whispered, defiantly, as she met the disapproving gaze of the long line of family portraits. "It is to keep up your own old traditions that I am doing it."

Then something of the proud spirit of her ancestors seemed to take possession of her as she pa.s.sed out of their patronising presence. It helped her to hold her head high, and carried her through a trying interview with the most fas.h.i.+onable dressmaker in the city, whither she had slipped away with some little models of children's dresses of her own designing and making.

At the end of an hour she came away triumphant. Madame, impressed by her references, quick to see the value of her original ideas, and shrewd enough to know how useful this artistic young girl could be to her, consented to her proposition to establish a department for the making of children's fancy costumes, of which Claribel was to be in charge. At first the woman named a salary so low that she would not have dared propose it, had she not thought that necessity had driven the girl to such a step. She was used to beating down her employees to absurdly low wages. Then it was that the pride of all her ancestors seemed to blaze out of Claribel's eyes, and she drew herself up haughtily.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'YOU NEEDN'T LOOK AT ME IN THAT WAY,' SHE WHISPERED, DEFIANTLY."]

"You know that the designing alone would be worth four times that sum, madame," she said, quietly. "If that is the best you can do, we will not discuss the subject farther."

Madame hastily retracted then. She knew it would never do to let this opportunity slip into the hands of a rival, and the names of Claribel's references were too prominent to overlook. So a little later, when the next train bore the excited young girl homeward, it was a triumphant voice that poured out the story of her success to Wilma, who met her at the gate.

"And at a salary that will put new s.h.i.+ngles on old Marchmont," she cried, "and put Daphne in the kitchen, and picnic fare in the pantry every day."

"You needn't think you're going to do it all," exclaimed Wilma. "This very day I discovered all the old hothouse frames stored away in the carriage-house, as good as new; and Mam Daphne told me so many tales about the violets and the lettuce that used to be the boast of Marchmont every winter, that I went over to consult papa's old gardener. Sister has actually consented to let me try my hand at raising both. I haven't told her yet that it is my ambition to furnish the fas.h.i.+onable club houses this winter with extra fine lettuce at fancy prices. Poor sister! She'll be horrified, after all her precautions, to have one of us turn out a market-gardener and the other a dressmaker."

"Say designer, if you please, when you break my news to her, and tell her that my creative ability simply had to have an outlet of some kind, and that this will be a stepping-stone to my career as artist.

Maybe that will help to soften the blow."

"Really, it was Tom who began it. He ought to have all the credit, or otherwise," said Wilma, as they pa.s.sed on into the wide front hall. "I hadn't realised the condition of our family latch-string until I saw it through his eyes. Then I began to trace it back and found that it began in the door of a pioneer log cabin; and oh, what do you think, Claribel, the two ancestors we are proudest of, the ones we all quote the oftenest, and plume ourselves the most on being their descendants, had to dig and delve for everything they got. Old Mrs. Carter told me so this morning." She pointed to the two portraits that headed the long line. "_Now_ if sister makes any objections to our plans, I'll just refer her to the first of the grandmammas who made our hospitality proverbial, and, hardening her hands with the work of the wilderness, was yet the truest gentlewoman of them all."

THE END.