Читать книгу The Carter Girls of Carter House - Emma Speed Sampson - Страница 5

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Helen arrived on the eight forty-five from Grantley. She met her father going to the office just as she came up the front steps to their house.

“Daddy, you look mighty cheerful for so early in the morning,” she said to him, as he stopped to kiss her.

“I am cheerful, as cheerful can be and for good reason, too. I haven’t time to tell you now, but ask Nan.” Mr. Carter walked away as briskly as he used to do before his illness.

“Nan, do tell me what Daddy is so blithesome about. He said he didn’t have time to tell me but that you would,” demanded Helen, coming into the dining-room just as the rest of the family were getting up from the breakfast table.

“He has just been asked to draw the plans for that big new apartment house Martin and Greene are going to put up on the Boulevard. Of course, it means an awful lot to him to get it because it is the first big order he has had since he went to work again. Then, too, if his plans are accepted he can get all the work he can do, as all the real estate men are putting up apartment houses as fast as they can,” Nan explained as she cleared away the table.

“But I am afraid he will get to working too hard again and all the good Dr. Wright has done him will come to nothing,” said Lucy.

“We’ll just have to make an iron bound rule about his office hours just as we do about Bobby’s bed time,” said Douglas, reaching out a sisterly hand and napkin to wipe the egg off Bobby’s chin.

“Pooh! men can’t have no fun. There’s too many women in this world to suit me,” announced Bobby, sliding under the table just in time to avoid Douglas’s napkin.

“We are completely forgetting about Helen’s trip to Grantley,” Nan reminded them. “Give us a full report, please, Helen.”

“First, as you suggested, I went to see Dr. Wright and he said he thought it an excellent idea. In fact, he took me up to Grantley in his car. You know, he was very fond of both old ladies.”

“Yes, indeed we understand,” teased Lucy, “he was very fond of both old ladies, so he took you up to Grantley in his car.”

Ignoring Lucy, Helen continued: “Poor Miss Ellen was very pathetic and really appreciated my coming. She was immensely pleased that Dr. Wright came, too. She expects to sell the place and agreed to sell us the furniture at a reasonable price. Her present plan is to come to Richmond for the winter and board. What the poor old thing is to do in the summer, I don’t know. I asked her to consider that she could always come to camp with us, but I am afraid it would be pretty rough for her.”

Douglas went into the kitchen to arrange the tray that had to be carried up to Mrs. Carter every morning, and Lucy began busily to scan the ‘help wanted female’ column of the morning paper. She had been to a business college the previous spring, had rented a typewriter to take to camp and had attended to all the camp correspondence, taking dictation diligently from Douglas all summer so as not to forget her shorthand. It was her intention to get a job as soon as possible.

“Heavens, Lucy, I almost forgot something awfully important I had to tell you,” said Helen. “George Wright told me that his secretary had gotten married suddenly and left him high and dry. He wanted to know if there was any chance of getting you to take her place. I told him I would ask you as soon as I came home and have you call him up. He said his old secretary got a hundred and twenty-five a month and that of course he would expect you to have the same. You have to answer the phone, take his mail, and of course he has a good deal, send out the bills and make his appointments for him. The hours aren’t bad, from nine to five. What do you say?”

Lucy’s eyes widened with excitement at the prospect, making her look very lovely. “Whew!” she whistled in a most undignified manner for a girl who has just been offered a hundred and twenty-five dollar job. “That isn’t a job, that is a position. But Helen, I am scared to death. I would never be able to spell pneumonia and all those horrible things. Do you suppose I could ever do it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a hundred and twenty-five dollars that we could absolutely count on coming in regularly every month?”

Helen smiled at Lucy’s pretty excitement. She was very fond of this little sister. “Darling child, you can get a medical dictionary that will tell you how to spell any disease in the world, so don’t let that worry you. But I don’t want to coerce you. You are old enough to decide for yourself, but you must decide quickly, as George has to have somebody immediately,” Helen went upstairs to let Lucy think it over by herself.

She had no sooner left the room than Lucy with the quickness that was typical of her dashed over to the phone and called Dr. Wright.

“Hello, is that Dr. Wright? Well, I want that job and am ready to start in tomorrow,” she said breathlessly.

A minute later she went upstairs to Mrs. Carter’s room and grabbing Douglas ’round the neck began dancing her about. “My boss is coming for me in his car tomorrow morning at twenty minutes of nine and I will be making fifteen hundred a year!” she sang.

“What in the world is the child talking about?” queried Mrs. Carter in a pretty high voice.

“For goodness sake, Lucy, I feel like a whirling dervish. What in the world has happened?” And Douglas, exhausted, reeled over to the chaise-longue.

“The youngest daughter of the House of Carter has just accepted a position as Dr. George Wright’s secretary and starts to work tomorrow morning and gets a hundred and twenty-five dollars per month for her indispensable services, and now I must call up Lil Tate and tell her,” and Lucy capered out of the room in time to miss Mrs. Carter’s remarks about her disappointment that none of her girls wanted to make their debut.

“Poor little Mummie, you had better start trying to make a Hiram G. Parker out of Bobby. He is your only chance, now the last and youngest of the Carter girls had declared herself. I hope Lucy makes good, as she needs just that sort of experience to steady her. Now come on, Nan, we must go down to the shop and see about having those partitions knocked down,” and Douglas and Nan left Mrs. Carter to continue her dressing and wonder on her youngest daughter’s joy at starting to work,—and her other daughters’ running a shop! If only they would call it by another name! At each mention of the word ‘shop,’ an involuntary shiver ran through her.

“Bobby, dear,” she called from her window, “come up here and let me put on one of your little white linen suits so I can take you down town shopping with me.”

“Nawm!” shrieked back her son. “My little toad done hopped tereckly under the garage and I gotta set here till he comes out agin.”

Mrs. Carter must have felt like the old hen who, after weeks of faithful setting rewarded by a fluffy yellow brood, took her offspring out for their first walk only to see them all swim away at the first little pond. Not that anyone would have thought of the old hen in connection with Mrs. Carter’s appearance. She looked more like a tropical bird of brilliant plumage after she settled the scarlet feathered toque over her still dark curly hair, and caught up a handsome beaded bag that went admirably with the fawn-colored jersey dress, heavily embroidered in deep-toned red worsted, that she had chosen to wear upon her first shopping expedition.

Mrs. Carter picked her dainty way along the cement walk that led around the side of the house to the garage. Bobby was there waiting for his toad, as he had said he intended to do, but he was not ‘setting’. He had gotten on his stomach and insinuated himself half under the garage, and the despised white linen suit that his mother adored to keep him dressed in, was in a state of muddiness and grime almost sufficient to satisfy its small owner.

“Oh, Bobby, Bobby, what a sight you are! I can never take you with me looking as you do, and I haven’t time to change your suit,” and Mrs. Carter wrung her slender gloved hands in distress.

“Yas’m! I thought if I would get dirty enough you wouldn’t make me go,” said Bobby quite frankly, wriggling even farther under the garage after the truant toad.

With a little shrug of despair, Mrs. Carter turned and walked slowly to the street. There did not seem to be a chance of making Bobby into a Hiram G. Parker, as her daughter had suggested. She went on down Franklin Street, now and again smiling and bowing to friends in passing automobiles. It was good to be back even if her daughters refused to be the most popular debutantes of the season, as she wished them all to be. As she passed the Commonwealth Club a dapper figure descended the long flight of steps that ran down to the street from the Club porch.

It was that glass of fashion, Hiram G. Parker.

“Mrs. Carter,” he said with a most impressive combination of hat-raising-and bowing, “I am delighted to see you back in town. I was afraid you were going to hibernate in the country again this winter. It should be a pretty gay season this year. These post-war buds aren’t half bad. Mrs. Addison Parrish has a very pretty daughter. I have asked her to lead the first Monday German with me. A bit of a flapper, but good looking enough to make up for it.”

“Yes we are in for the winter and I can’t tell you how glad I am. I enjoy a few weeks at the White but as for the country, I must admit, I hate it,” said Mrs. Carter, making a pretty little moue at the thought of the country.

“No, I must say that a woman of your type is distinctly urban.” Hiram G. Parker had a flattering way with women, no matter how old or how young. “Will you be out at the club tonight? Same old Saturday night affair. Make Carter bring you out,—and you must save a dance for me. I have got to go to one of the debutante dinners, and then the party is to finish up at the club. I can stand it better if I know relief in the form of you is to be there.”

Parker always took the attitude that debutantes and debutante’s parties bored him exceedingly, but if that was the case there seemed little reason for his perennial attendance at these scorned parties and his marked attention to the pretty debutantes. With another bow and smile, he left Mrs. Carter and turned toward Main Street for a car down to his office, where he spent very little of his time.

Mrs. Carter went on, immensely brightened by her few minutes’ talk with Parker. She thought: “I will make Robert take us all out to the club for dinner. Douglas and Lewis, Helen and Dr. Wright, and Robert and me. It will help to get the girls back into the swing of things. It is too bad Douglas is so sunburned, but as she is going to announce her engagement to Lewis immediately I don’t suppose it really matters.”

She was on Broad Street now, looking in the shop windows at the showing of early winter styles. There was one window especially charming, full of evening capes and wraps. It reminded Mrs. Carter that none of her girls had appropriate wraps, and she went in and chose a gold panne velvet one for Douglas, and a heavy old rose satin one with a deep white fur collar for Helen. She calmly charged these and went on to another shop to get one for herself, as there had been none there to suit her exactly. A strong wind had blown up while she was in the shop and she was conscious of feeling quite chilly as she walked more briskly.

As she passed a furrier’s, she stopped with a thoughtful expression. She needed an evening wrap and her old seal-skin coat needed remodelling. The girls were always talking of economizing. Here was a chance for her to do it. She would get a long moleskin coat that would make a perfectly appropriate evening wrap and take the place of the old seal coat that needed making over. Pleased with her idea, she entered the establishment, the foremost in town, and asked to see mole wraps.

“Madame is charming in this model and we would be pleased to let her have it for very little, nine hundred and fifty, as there is a tiny flaw beneath the collar,” said the pseudo-French saleswoman, with a ringed hand smoothing back her sleek dark hair, lifted high off her pale narrow forehead.

“I shall take it. I think I shall just wear it as I am meeting a friend directly and we are to motor to her place out of town for lunch, and it is grown a great deal cooler since I left home this morning. Yes, please charge it to Mr. Robert Carter,” and immensely delighted with her purchase the little lady tripped out, looking truly charming in her nine hundred and fifty dollar bargain.

She could but notice the many admiring glances that followed her smart little figure down the street. It would be nice for Aline Randolph to see her for the first time after so many months when she was looking her best.

The glances that she got from three pairs of young eyes, however, were not admiring. Page Allison and Dum and Dee Tucker rattled down the street in the disreputable Tucker Ford that their new cars could never replace in their esteem, just in time to see Mrs. Carter enter Mrs. Randolph’s waiting limousine and drive off.

“Did you ever,” the three said indignantly. “Don’t you remember we saw Mrs. Carter go into Levinsky’s without a fur coat? And now here she is with one. It isn’t fair to those dandy daughters of hers. As soon as they get a little money saved up, she dashes off and throws it away,” and Dum, who was chauffeuring, honked the horn furiously at the big blue limousine that was turning in the middle of the street.

“Maybe she just went in to get it out of cold storage,” soothed Page Allison.

“Not a chance,” tweedled the twins. “We remember her old fur coat. It was seal, trimmed with skunk,—a very extreme style.”

“Do you suppose the Carters have got their tea-room open yet? We might all drop around and get something to eat if they have it running,” suggested Page.

They found their friends at the shop, all in big aprons busily cleaning up the debris that had been the result of the carpenters’ knocking down the partitions.

“We came around to get fed but there does not seem to be much to offer us but shavings,” announced Dum. “And as we are just as hungry as ever, please take off the bewitching aprons, pile in Henry Ford, and we’ll chug around to Mr. Huyler’s establishment and see what he can do for us.”