Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 5

The Wright family was up in arms over Elizabeth’s decision “to go into trade.” That was the way they expressed the fact that their daughter and sister was going to open up the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop with the unstylish girl from Washington.

“What will people say?” questioned Gertrude.

“I haven’t a doubt it will simply ruin her chances for ever having a proposal,” said Annabel. “Elizabeth is pretty enough, but she is so peculiar. Men don’t like peculiar girls.”

“She is so selfish to be doing such a silly thing,” complained Pauline. “I just know people will get mixed and think Margaret and I are the ones.”

“Well, it is too bad,” put in Mrs. Wright, as she bustled in. “I am sure I have done my best to make all of you girls have a good time and, now the war is over, I hoped Elizabeth would be contented to make her debut in society. Of course, I could put my foot down and say she shouldn’t, but I hate to take issue with her—”

“Yes, and if you do she will simply go off and live with that funny little Miss O’Gorman, who never had a beau in her life, I could wager anything. What does Father say?” yawned Margaret, who was busily engaged in putting an extra polish on her already highly glazed finger nails.

“Say about what?” asked Mr. Wright as he entered the room, his arms laden with pamphlets with which he was planning to spend a happy morning.

“Say about Elizabeth’s crazy plan to open up a foolish shop,” explained Margaret.

“Well, it seems strange to me that one of my blood should engage in mercantile pursuits. There has never been a member of the family that I know of, in trade. What is the nature of her undertaking?”

Mr. Wright always used the longest words he could think of. The strange thing was he did not often seem to have to think of them but had them on his tongue’s end.

“As far as we can make out they are going to sell everything from pins to pianos,” said Gertrude.

“She will have to stop when the warm weather sets in, because I have taken the lake cottage for two months, July and August, and expect to close up the house in town,” declared Mrs. Wright briskly.

“Why don’t you get it a month earlier and force Elizabeth to come in June?” suggested Pauline.

“Good idea! I could get it quite cheaply for June, they may even let me have it for almost nothing, as June is an off month for the lake and it is better for property to have a tenant than not, especially where one takes such good care of a place as I am sure I try to do. I shall have to ask you girls to go in the parlor or dining room this morning, I am going to have this room thoroughly cleaned. The books must be dusted and the walls wiped down. The windows were washed last week, but it would not hurt them to be washed again. I may have the rug beaten too.”

“Oh, Mother, for pity’s sake, the library is clean enough!” complained Annabel. “Why don’t you let us stay put?”

“Not at all! I work my fingers to the bone trying to make a comfortable home for your father and you girls and all I ask of you is to move to another room.”

Mr. Wright had settled himself on the sofa with his catalogues and was loath to move, but move he must, as a sullen colored maid came in with broom and rags and ladder and pail.

“I ain’t never wucked fur no lady possessed with sech a clean devil befo’,” she grumbled as she began to dismantle the room. “Th’ ain’t no wonder th’ ain’t no nap lef on this here cyarpet. It done had all the nap breshed off’n it. It’s a wonder the winders don’t come inter holes with all the washin’ they gits. Yo’ maw don’t let the dus’ git laid befo’ she’s a stirrin’ it up again,” she said to the girls as they reluctantly trailed from the room.

The abused creatures had hardly settled themselves in the parlor when Mrs. Wright called from upstairs:

“Girls, come on up here! Miss Pinkie and I are ready to try on those shirt waists. All of you come, as we are ready for all of you.”

Miss Pinkie was the sewing woman engaged spring and fall for a month at the time to get the family in order. Mrs. Wright sewed with her and occasionally one of the daughters condescended to make buttonholes or put a little finishing handwork on the garments. Miss Pinkie was a good sempstress but undervalued her acquirements so that she was willing to work for very little money. Mrs. Wright with her usual efficiency did all the cutting and fitting, although Miss Pinkie was quite capable of doing it herself.

“Heavens! Mother won’t let us sit still a minute,” complained Pauline.

“Sometimes I think Elizabeth shows her sense to get out of it all,” whispered Margaret to Gertrude, but Gertrude looked so shocked at her younger sister that Margaret declared she was just fooling. It did not seem very hard lines to have to go upstairs and stand to have shirt waists fitted on one, but the idle Wright girls felt it to be. How much happier they would have been if their mother had seen fit to have them make their own clothes, but that lady thought she was doing everything in her power to make her children contented in working for them from morning until night. It was much easier to sew for them than to teach them how to sew.

“I need more buttons,” said Mrs. Wright briskly as the daughters entered the sewing room. “Are you going out this morning, any of you girls?”

“We had not planned to go. We aren’t dressed for the street,” drawled Gertrude. “We were up late last night at the dance.”

“Well, never mind, then! I can get them myself. I am afraid you would not get the right size anyhow,” was the mother’s cheerful acceptance of her daughter’s selfishness. “It won’t take me a minute to get dressed and I can market for to-morrow while I am down town. I think I’ll step in and see how that foolish Elizabeth is getting on while I am near the building.” Her curiosity was as strong as her disapproval.

“Oh, let’s all of us go!” exclaimed Pauline. And so the four who were too weary to change their dresses to go buy buttons went gayly off to prepare themselves to visit their foolish sister in what they considered her degrading stronghold.

“I’ll see the agent and engage the cottage at the lake for June, while I am down town,” said Mrs. Wright as she bustled into her street clothes after having fitted the shirt waists and given Miss Pinkie minute directions as to how to sew them up.

Mrs. Wright and her daughters made a handsome group as together they walked down the street. The mother had been a very pretty girl and still was a good looking woman, although she had no time to give to her own appearance. She spent all the money and time that could be spared on beautifying her daughters. Her object in life was to marry them well and it was said by the knowing ones of Dorfield that she kept a list of the eligible young men of the town and carefully cultivated them in degree according to their eligibility.

“Who was that young man who bowed to you just now?” she asked Pauline sharply. “I never saw him before.”

“He’s a friend of Danny Dexter’s. I met him last night at the dance. He’s on a newspaper, I believe.”

“What newspaper?”

“The Recorder. He dances divinely.”

“You did not tell me his name.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Weren’t you introduced?” she asked, shocked.

“Oh, yes, but I didn’t catch his name. It was kind of Frenchified in sound.”

“Well you had better find out. He looks quite nice. We might ask him to call and then have him down to the lake for a week end. We must not go to the lake before Mary Louise Burrows’s wedding. I would not have you girls miss it.”

“I don’t believe for an instant she intends to ask any of us but Elizabeth, who has to be asked as she is bridesmaid,” said Gertrude.

“Not ask you! Absurd! You can just leave that to me. Of course, I know she is supposed to have only her intimate friends and all that, but Danny Dexter knows every man in Dorfield and they are sure to be there.” Quite cheerfully the Wright girls were willing to leave it to her, for they felt sure it would come out all right with such a major general maneuvering for them.

The buttons were bought; the next day’s marketing done; the real estate agent interviewed and the cottage at the lake engaged for June at a bargain; and then the cavalcade started for the old building where Josie and Elizabeth had rented a room which they were rapidly converting into a Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.

“It all seems so vulgar,” commented Pauline, as with raised skirts she tripped up the far from clean stairs.

“Not even an elevator,” from Gertrude.

“I’d like to come down here and scrub this place!” exclaimed Mrs. Wright.

“Well, for Heaven’s sake don’t!” cried Annabel. “It is bad enough to have one’s sister keeping a shop without having one’s mother scrubbing one.”

They all of them laughed at Annabel’s rueful countenance and, without knocking, opened the door and walked into the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.