"I'm so sorry my aunt's Thursdays are over;she never has them after Lent,but we're to have some people Tuesday evening at a little concert which a musical friend is going to give with some other artists.There won't be any banjos,I'm afraid,but there'll be some very good singing,and my aunt would be so glad if you could come with your mother."She put down her aunt's card on the table near her,while Mela gurgled,as if it were the best joke:"Oh,my!Mother never goes anywhere;you couldn't get her out for love or money."But she was herself overwhelmed with a simple joy at Margaret's politeness,and showed it in a sensuous way,like a child,as if she had been tickled.She came closer to Margaret and seemed about to fawn physically upon her.
"Ain't she just as lovely as she can live?"she demanded of her sister when Margaret was gone.
"I don't know,"said Christine."I guess she wanted to know who Mr.Beaton had been lending her banjo to.""Pshaw!Do you suppose she's in love with him?"asked Mela,and then she broke into her hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her."Well,don't eat me,Christine!I wonder who she is,anyway?I'm goun'to git it out of Mr.Beaton the next time he calls.I guess she's somebody.
Mrs.Mandel can tell.I wish that old friend of hers would hurry up and git well--or something.But I guess we appeared about as well as she did.I could see she was afraid of you,Christine.I reckon it's gittun'around a little about father;and when it does I don't believe we shall want for callers.Say,are you goun'?To that concert of theirs?""I don't know.Not till I know who they are first.""Well,we've got to hump ourselves if we're goun'to find out before Tuesday."As she went home Margaret felt wrought in her that most incredible of the miracles,which,nevertheless,any one may make his experience.She felt kindly to these girls because she had tried to make them happy,and she hoped that in the interest she had shown there had been none of the poison of flattery.She was aware that this was a risk she ran in such an attempt to do good.If she had escaped this effect she was willing to leave the rest with Providence.
VIII.
The notion that a girl of Margaret Vance's traditions would naturally form of girls like Christine and Mela Dryfoos would be that they were abashed in the presence of the new conditions of their lives,and that they must receive the advance she had made them with a certain grateful humility.However they received it,she had made it upon principle,from a romantic conception of duty;but this was the way she imagined they would receive it,because she thought that she would have done so if she had been as ignorant and unbred as they.Her error was in arguing their attitude from her own temperament,and endowing them,for the purposes of argument,with her perspective.They had not the means,intellectual or moral,of feeling as she fancied.If they had remained at home on the farm where they were born,Christine would have grown up that embodiment of impassioned suspicion which we find oftenest in the narrowest spheres,and Mela would always have been a good-natured simpleton;but they would never have doubted their equality with the wisest and the finest.As it was,they had not learned enough at school to doubt it,and the splendor of their father's success in making money had blinded them forever to any possible difference against them.They had no question of themselves in the social abeyance to which they had been left in New York.They had been surprised,mystified;it was not what they had expected;there must be some mistake.
They were the victims of an accident,which would be repaired as soon as the fact of their father's wealth had got around.They had been steadfast in their faith,through all their disappointment,that they were not only better than most people by virtue of his money,but as good as any;and they took Margaret's visit,so far as they,investigated its motive,for a sign that at last it was beginning to get around;of course,a thing could not get around in New York so quick as it could in a small place.They were confirmed in their belief by the sensation of Mrs.Mandel when she returned to duty that afternoon,and they consulted her about going to Mrs.Horn's musicale.If she had felt any doubt at the name for there were Horns and Horns--the address on the card put the matter beyond question;and she tried to make her charges understand what a precious chance had befallen them.She did not succeed;they had not the premises,the experience,for a sufficient impression;and she undid her work in part by the effort to explain that Mrs.Horn's standing was independent of money;that though she was positively rich,she was comparatively poor.Christine inferred that Miss Vance had called because she wished to be the first to get in with them since it had begun to get around.This view commended itself to Mela,too,but without warping her from her opinion that Miss Vance was all the same too sweet for anything.She had not so vivid a consciousness of her father's money as Christine had;but she reposed perhaps all the more confidently upon its power.She was far from thinking meanly of any one who thought highly of her for it;that seemed so natural a result as to be amiable,even admirable;she was willing that any such person should get all the good there was in such an attitude toward her.
They discussed the matter that night at dinner before their father and mother,who mostly sat silent at their meals;the father frowning absently over his plate,with his head close to it,and making play into his mouth with the back of his knife (he had got so far toward the use of his fork as to despise those who still ate from the edge of their knives),and the mother partly missing hers at times in the nervous tremor that shook her face from side to side.
