Читать книгу In New York with the Tucker Twins - Emma Speed Sampson - Страница 5

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“Well, how do we like it?” Dee asked as we threw ourselves in the rickity Morris chairs.

“All right, so far!” was Dum’s verdict.

“Well cooked food and copy to burn!” was mine.

“Did you ever see such funny folks? When I got off my café de l’enfant joke and the laugh spread around the table I longed for a camera. Dum, I wish you were going to be a great caricaturist instead of a great sculptor.”

“Do you reckon we shall have to go to bed every night at this hour?” asked Dum.

“Of course not, we don’t have to go to bed now, but we do have to get out of the holy of holies,” I laughed. “Madame means for her boarders to sit in their rooms. Hence these folding beds!”

“Surely she will let us see any guests we may have in her hideous old parlor,” said Dum shuddering, her artistic soul quivering in remembrance of the country scene.

Her query was settled by a timid knock at the door.

“It must be little Claire,” I ventured. “Maybe she comes up to turn down the beds, poor child.”

“I hope it is not that Yvonne,” said Dee. “She is something of a minx to my way of thinking.”

Again the timid knock while we sat and surmised.

“Come in!” yawned Dum.

The door opened slowly and there stood Mr. Reginald Kent!

“I—they—told me to come right up!” he stammered.

The breeding of the Tuckers was always to be relied upon. Anyone would have thought that their lives had been spent in third floor backs with folding beds and that it was the ordinary occurrence to have young men come to call on them in such places.

“This is where we live,” said Dee graciously. “We are very glad to see you.”

Certainly he was delighted to see us, especially Dum who had made an impression on the young man years before, one that had never been effaced. Dee and I squeezed in one of the Morris chairs, the one that seemed the most able to carry double, and a seat was made for our guest.

Reginald Kent’s appearance and personality were quite as pleasing as they had been years before when he had paid the visit to his cousins, the Winns, down in my country, and had gone on the memorable deer hunt with us. He had obtained our address from Sally Winn, who was an indefatigable letter writer and had taken great pleasure in letting her handsome young cousin know all about our going to New York and our plans to live in the French boarding house. He had wasted no time in looking us up, determined to be the first one to offer assistance to three lone lorn maidens adrift in a great city.

After we were comfortably seated and had answered and asked the questions that always get into the conversation for the first few moments, before persons who have not met for a long time can adjust themselves, Mr. Kent looked curiously around our quarters.

“Rather different surroundings from the last in which we met,” he ventured.

Our minds flew back to the old library at Bracken, my beloved home. A great cheerful fire was lighting the book-lined walls, close to the hearth was the ever present circle of dogs and then a widening circle of happy, gay persons. Father was there and Mr. Tucker; poor Sally Winn forgetting for the moment her imaginary aches and pains; the silent Jo Winn, his eyes ever fixed on Dee, in hopeless admiration, while he softly pulled the ears of his favorite pointer; Reginald Kent and Dum were deep in the contemplation of an old book of engravings; and I was busying myself seeing that our guests were comfortable. Ah, me! Why should we want to leave such pleasant surroundings and come to a great place like New York and live in the third floor back of a French boarding house where the madame scorned us and put us in a chamber with folding beds and hideous busts and vases and green paper that was enough to turn the stomach of an ostrich? Why? Because we were young and must go try our wings.

Reginald Kent gazed long and hard at the boot vases filled with red and purple paper flowers and then an uncontrollable fit of laughter seized him and we joined in. We told him of the fearful and wonderful decorations in the parlor and promised to let him get a glimpse of them some day if he was very, very good.

The coming of this young man had put heart into all of us. We felt that in some way he was a connecting link between the old and the new life. He offered his services and even wanted to call and escort us to our various classes which we had planned to begin on the following morning. Dee and I declined as we were to go together to the College of —— and felt we could manage without his assistance, but since the Art Students’ League where Dum was to enter was right in Mr. Kent’s line, she accepted his offer with thanks.

Reginald Kent was a young artist who had gone into commercial art with all his energy and talent and was making good in a most surprising way. I could but compare him with the art students at Madame Gaston’s table d’hôte and my respect for commercial art arose to great heights. A man can be just as artistic with his hair cut, an unshaven chin, neglected nails do not necessarily mean an eye for color or line.

I was glad he was to start Dum on the right road and knew an introduction at the art school by an arrived artist (even though he did happen to have arrived by commercial art) would be no small thing for a new student.

Our caller did not stay long. He made an engagement to meet Dum in the morning and took himself off, a happy smile on his pleasing countenance.

The business of getting to bed was a strenuous one. The double folding abomination had a way of catching midway and it took the combined strength of all three of us to pull the wretched thing down and then when it was, as we thought, safely placed on its extra hinged legs it suddenly, without the least warning, slowly resumed its perpendicular position.

“Only suppose we had been in it!” cried Dum. “We must sleep with our heads to the foot, Dee, so if we do fold up in the night we can be upright. I should hate to be found dead standing on my head.”

By diligent search a clamp was discovered that locked the bed into position, not that we trusted the clamp. It had a nonchalant, unreliable expression and we suspected it of being something of a practical joker, so we remade the bed so in case of accidents the twins would be discovered standing on their feet.

My bed had its idiosyncrasies also. Thinking it was to be stubborn as was the way with folding beds, we all caught hold of it and with a strong pull, and a long pull, and a pull altogether, bang! the beast came down on my poor head.

“Poor Page! That was too bad,” commiserated Dee, dabbing a wet rag on the place.

“Oh, it’s nothing. ‘My head is bloody, but unbowed.’ Now let’s hunt for a clamp so I won’t spend the night in a vertical position. I am tired enough to sleep standing up in my stall but I’d rather lie down,” I laughed.

There was no clamp and we discovered that nothing but main strength could raise my little couch.