Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/703

 material from which to erect another quilted petticoat, nor the means of procuring it, even if she could spare the time necessary to the making of one,—which she could not, being now closely occupied between the engagements of her hired needle and the newly-found cares that Charity had imposed upon her.

But, however the probabilities may appear, Miss Wimple's Hoop was a shaved-whalebone fact; and the quilted petticoat would never have been missed, but for the officious scrutiny of the eyes, and the provoking prating of the tongues, of a sophisticated few who marvelled greatly at the pliancy and the "perfect set" of Miss Wimple's Alboni,—"and that demure little prig, too! who'd have thought it?"

As for Simon Blount, he was quick to perceive the new experience to which the skimped delaine had been introduced, and at first it disturbed and embarrassed him; but his light, elastic temper soon recovered its careless buoyancy, with a sly smile at what he considered an oddity, newly discovered, in the character of his prim sweetheart. "Oh! it's all right, of course," he thought; "Sally knows what she's about; but it's very funny!"

And so, if this strange disturbing of the established order of "things" in the kingdom of Wimple had rested with the exaltation of the Hoop, that body politic would presently have been reduced to tranquillity, no doubt, and the all-agogness of Hendrik would have come quietly to nought, like any other popular flutter following upon a new thing under the sun. But in a romantic cause the conscientiousness of Miss Wimple, for all her seeming matter-of-fact, took on a quality of chivalry; and she displayed a Quixotism most tiltfully disposed toward any windmill of conventional proprieties that might plant itself in the way by which her beauteous and distressed damsel was to escape. So, before all the decencies of Hendrik had recovered from the shock of the Hoop, she threw them into a new and worse "conniption" by an even more daring innovation upon their good, easy notions of her; for the next thing she did was—a basque and flounces. Thus it happened:—

Madeline had become quite another Madeline,—say a Magdalen, rather, —under the gentle discipline of her admirable angel. Her wonted distraction had subsided into a pensive sadness, which manifested itself in many a grateful, graceful tenderness toward that glorifier of the skimped delaine. She had observed the Hoop at once, and greeted it with a solitary smile, accepting it for a happy sign and a token; for she had recognized Simon Blount when she turned into the shop, that night, out of the darkness and the cold, and, with the alert intelligence of a woman, even so self-absorbed as she was then, had construed his gallant "good-night." She thought she understood Miss Wimple's Hoop, because she had not discovered the poetry in Miss Wimple's quilted petticoat. They had not spoken of those things again. Delicacy was the law for those two; and to do their best, and thankfully, bravely, accept the first deliverance Heaven might send them, was their religion. Like two Micawbers of Faith, Hope, and Charity, they waited for something to "turn up."

Miss Wimple invested a daily three-cent piece in a New York paper, and diligently conned the "Wants" before the Marriages and Deaths, —extraordinary woman! An "opening" had but to show itself, and Miss Wimple was ready to fling her character into the breach for the benefit of her Magdalen. Strong-minded woman!

At last it came. A gentleman who had recently lost his wife wanted a house-keeper and governess for his two little girls,—the offices to be united in the person of "a lady by birth, education, and associations"; to such a liberal salary would be given; and in case she should be in straitened circumstances, a reasonable advance would be made, "to enable the lady to assume at once the position of a respected member of his family." The very place!