Mrs. Mulgrave's Story

That sea view would be good as a picture

It is Mrs. Jim, however, who speaks first. This is one side of it: You must know, she said, that when I turned round and she was coming in the door. I'm sure I thought I was dreaming. If it had been the Queen a-com-ing in, I shouldn't have been more surprised; and the three children with their three faces like little pigs! "Here, you," whispered I to Benjamin Franklin, "you just go 'long and stick your face in some water, quick metre! And give Johnny's a scrubbing, too." And I wet the corner of my apron between my lips in a hurry, and rubbed Sue's mouth; and then I made believe I hadn't seen her before and dusted the other chair for her; and she sat down, and I sat down, and we looked at one another. Lord! she was that fine! Her flounces were silk, and they were scalloped like so many roses, and lace showing under the edges of them; and she had such boots, setting like gloves just enough to make your eyes water. But the flowers in her hat you should have seen them I declare you could have smelled them! Well, she seemed to fill up the little room, and if ever I was glad of anything, I was glad that I'd scrubbed the floor that very day, so that it was clean enough to eat off of glad, too, that I'd taken Jim's old hat out of the broken window and put in the smooth bottom of a box with a good respectable-looking tack. Jim might have mended that window, for he's a perfect Jack-at-all trades; but he'd rather play the fiddle than eat, and he was a-playing it out in the tie-up that moment, with all the wind there was blowing. However, I couldn't complain, for he'd just mended the chair, so that it was almost as good as new, and had put me up as tidy a shelf as you please over the stove for the brush and comb and the hair-oil bottle. If I'd been a little slicked up myself, with my new print and my pink apron, or if I'd only had my bang on, I wouldn't a-minded. But when Benjamin Franklin came back with just the top dirt rinsed off, and the rest all smears, I did feel so vexed that I gave him as good a shaking as a nut-tree gets in harvest.

You couldn't shut a drawer.

"Bless my heart!" says she, "what are you doing that for ?"

"Because he's so aggravating," says I.

"There, you go 'long; ' and I gave him a shove.

"Why," says she, "don't you remember how it used to feel to be shaken yourself?"

"I don't know as I do," says I.

"As if you were flying to atoms? And your body was as powerless as if it had been in the hands of a giant, and your heart as full of hate?"

"Why, look a-here," says I. 'Be you a missionary?"

"A missionary?" says she, laughing 'No. I m Mr. Mulgrave's wife. And I came up to see how the new house was getting on; but the house is so full of plaster dust inside and the whirlwind is blowing the things off the roof so outside, that I thought I would venture in here till the cloud passed,"

"Oh," says I.

"I knocked, but you didn't hear me."

"I'm real glad to see you," says I. "It's a dreadful lonesome place, and hardly anybody ever comes. Only I'm sorry everything's so at sixes and sevens. You see, where there's a family of children, and the wind blowing so," says I, with a lucky thought it's always good to have the wind or the weather to lay things to, because nobody's responsible for the elements "things will get to looking like ride-out."

"Children do make confusion," says she; "but confusion is pleasanter with them than pimlico order without them."

"Well, that's so," I answered; "for I remember when Johnny had the measles last year I thought if he only got well I'd let him whittle the door all to pieces if ever he wanted to again. Here, Benny," says I, for I began to feel bad to think I'd treated him so if he'd mortified me, 'twas no reason why I should mortify him, and right before folks so "take that to little sister," and I gave them something to keep them quiet. "I suppose you wouldn't care for any water?'' says I to her then. "Not if I put some molasses in it? I didn't know but the wind would have made you dry. Yes, children do make trouble. One of Jim's songs says,

'Marriage does bring trouble ;

A single life is best;

They should never double

Who would be at rest.'

But there! I wouldn't be without them for all the fine clothes I used to have when I was single and worked in the shop I worked down at Burrage's --- I suppose you never buy shoes there any'

"What makes you suppose so?" says she, smiling.

"Well, because your boots don't look like our work; they look like like Cinderella's slippers. Yes, I worked at Burrage's, off and on, a good many years on most of the time. I had six dollars a week. Folks used to wonder how I got so many clothes with it, after I'd paid my board. But I always had that six dollars laid out long before pay-day in my mind, you know so that I spent it to the best advantage. There's a great deal of pleasure in that. "

"A great deal," says she.

"That's what I say to Jim ; and then he says his is all spent before payday, too but with a difference, you know. I suppose you've got a real good, steady husband?"

"Oh, yes, indeed,'* says she, laughing some more.

"You must, to have such a nice house as that is going to be. But there! I shouldn't know what to do with it, and I don't envy you a bit."

"Oh, you needn't," says she, a-twitching her shoulder; "I expect to have

trouble enough with it.''

"Not," says I "I don't mean that Jim isn't steady. He's as steady as a clock at that old fiddle of his. But sometimes I do wish he loved his regular trade as well, or else that that was his trade. But I suppose if fiddling was his trade, he'd want to be wood carving all the time."

"Why don't you speak to him, " says she, "seriously?"

"Well, you can't," says I. "He's so sweet and good-natured and pleasant that when I've got my mind all made up to give him a sound talking to, he makes me like him so and sets me to laughing and plays such a twirling, twittering tune, that I can't do it to save my life."

You see, I'd got to talking rather free with her, because she listened so, and seemed interested, and kept looking at me in a wondering way, and at last took Sue up on her lap and gave her her rings to play with. Such rings! My gracious! one of them flashed with stones all round, just like the Milky Way. I should think it would have shone through her glove.

"But," says she, "you should tell him that his children will be growing up presently, and"-

"Oh, I do that," says I. "And he says, well, he'll do for the bad example they're to take warning by; and, at any rate, it's no use worrying before the time comes, and when they do grow up they can take care of themselves just the way we do."

"And are you contented to leave it so?" says she.

"Well, I'm contented enough. That is, in general. But I do wish sometimes that Jim would go down to his work regular every day, with his tin pail in his hand, like other men, and come back at night, and have a good round sum of money in hand at once, instead of just working long enough to get some flour and fish and pork and potatoes and sugar, and then not so much as lifting his finger again till that all gives out; it's such a hand-to-mouth way of living," says I. "And of course we can't get things together, such as a rocking-chair, and a sofa, and a good-sized looking-glass, and an eight-day clock. Not that I care much; only when a lady like you happens in I'd like to give her a seat that's softer. And there's a bureau. Now you wouldn't believe it, but I've never owned a bureau. "

"Indeed," says she.

"Yes. I don't think it's good manners to be always apologizing about the looks of a place; and so I don't say anything about all the boxes and bundles I have to keep my things in, that do give a littery look; but I am always meaning to have a bureau to put them in, if I can compass it ever. You see, it's hard getting so much money in a pile; and if I do happen to, why then there's something I must have, like Jim's boots, or flannel and yarn and cloth, or a little bed because you can't sleep with more than two children in one bed. And so, somehow, I never get the bureau. But then I don't give it up. Oh, I suppose you think my notions are dreadful extravagant," says I, for she was looking at me perfectly amazed; really, just as if I was a little monster, and she'd never seen the like. "And perhaps they are. But people must have something to ambition them, and it seems to me as though, if I ever could get a bureau, I should 'most feel as if I'd got a house!"

"Well, I declare!" says she, drawing of a long breath.

"I did come precious near it last fall," says I for I wanted her to see that it wasn't altogether an impossibility, and I wasn't wasting my time in vapors "when Jim was at work up here, helping lay out the garden. He was paid by the day, you know; Mr. Mulgrave paid him; and he was paid here, and I had the handling of the money; and I said to myself, 'Now or never for that bureau!' But, dear me, I had to turn that money over so many times to get the things I couldn't do without any way at all, that before I got round to the bureau it was every cent gone!"

Yes," she says, "it's apt to be so. I know if I don't get the expensive thing when I have the money in my purse, the money is frittered away and I've nothing to show for it."

"That's just the wayit is with me," says I. "But somehow I can't seem to do without the shoes and flannel, and all that. Oh, here's your husband! That's a powerful horse of his. But I should be afraid he'd break my neck if I was behind him."

"Not when my husband's driving," says she. And she bids me goodday, and kisses Sue, and springs into the wagon, and is off like a bird, with her veil and her feathers and her ribbons and streamers all flying.

Well, so far so good. Thinks I to myself : "She'll be a very pleasant neighbor. If she's ever so fine, she don't put on airs. And it does you good once in a while to have somebody listen when you want to run on about yourself. And maybe she'll have odd chores that I can turn my hand to plain sewing, or clear-starching, or an extra help when company comes in. I shouldn't wonder if we were quite a mutual advantage." And so I told Jim, and he said he shouldn't wonder, too.

Well, that evening, just at sunset now I'm telling you the real truth and if you don't believe me, there it is to speak for itself Jim was a-playing "Roslin Castle," and I was a-putting Sue to sleep, when I happened to lookout the window, and there was a job wagon coming straight up the hill, with something in it that had a great canvas hanging over it. "It's a queer time o' day," says I to myself, "to be bringing furniture into Mr. Mulgrave 's house, and it not half done, either. But it s none of my business. Maybe it's a refrigerator to be set in the cellar." And I went on patting Sue, when all at once Jim's fiddle stopped short, as if it broke, and I heard a gruff voice saying, "Where'll you have it? Here, you, sir, lend a hand. " And I dropped Sue on the bed and ran to the door, and they were a-bringing it in there, look at it, as pretty a bureau as you'll find in a day's walk. It's pine, to be sure, but it's seasoned, and every drawer shuts smooth and easy; and it's painted and grained, like black-walnut, and there's four deep drawers, and a shallow one at the bottom, and two little drawers at the top ; and in the upper drawer of the deep ones there's a place for this all parted off, and a place for that, and a place for the other; and, to crown the whole, a great swinging glass that you can see yourself in from head'to belt. Just look' Oh, I tell you it's a great thing. "With Mrs. Mulgrave's compliments," says the man, and went off and shut the door.

I never waited for anything. Sue was screaming on the bed; I let her scream. I never minded Benny's rassling nor Jim's laughing. I got down every bandbox and basket and bundle I had on the shelves, got out every bag there was under the bed and behind the doors, and in ten minutes that bureau was so full you couldn't shut a drawer. Then I took them all out and fixed them all over again. "It's ours, Jim! "says I; and then I just sat down and cried.