Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/706

698 good, to acknowledge the receipt of the check, and to thank him, that cunning Miss Wimple took the precaution to put him in possession of as much of her personality as would serve his purpose in case of accident, and provide for the chance of a shock to his suspicious and vigilant governess.]

Madeline received Miss Wimple's extraordinary good news with the silence of one bewildered. Nor even when she had come fully to appreciate all the beauty and the joy of it, did she give audible expression to her gratitude; she was too proud—or rather say, too religious—to subject the divine emotion to the vulgar ordeal of words; she only kissed Miss Wimple's hands, and mutely laid them on her bosom.

Then Miss Wimple arrayed her protégée in the skimped delaine, for which the "trifling alterations" and the "little cleaning" had done wonders,—and Madeline was, as it were, "clothed on with chastity." And Miss Wimple was jubilant over the charming effect, and "went on" in a manner surprising to behold. First she kissed Madeline, and then she kissed the dress; and she told Madeline, in a small torrent of triumph, what a tremendous fellow of a skimped delaine it was,—how cheap, and how dear it was,—what remarkable powers of endurance it had displayed, and with what force and versatility of character it had adapted itself to every new alteration or trimming,—and how she was so used to its ways, and it to hers, that she was almost ready to believe it could "get on her by itself,"—and how she felt sure it was expressly manufactured to do good in the world,—until she had so glorified the lowly skimped delaine, that Madeline began to feel in it like a queen, whose benignant star has forever exalted her above the vulgar sensation of having Nothing to Wear.

Now Madeline was quite ready to depart on her pilgrimage of penitence. But almost at the parting hour a circumstance occurred which grievously alarmed Miss Wimple, and so roused the devil whereof Madeline had been but just now possessed, that it stirred within her.

"nest" looked out upon the street by two front windows, that were immediately over the sign of the Hendrik Athenæum and Circulating Library. There was also a small side-window, affording a view of a bit of yard, quite private, and pleasant in its season, with an oval patch of grass, some hollyhocks, a grape-vine trained over a pretty structure of lattice to form a sort of summer-house, and a martin-box, in a decidedly original church-pattern, mounted on a tall, white pole. Of course the scene was cheerless and unsightly now; lumpy brown patches of earth showed through the unequally melting snow, where the grass-plot should have been; a few naked and ugly sticks were all the promise of the hollyhocks' yellow glory; the bare grape-vine showed on the dingy lattice like a tangled mesh of weather-stained ropes; and "there were no birds in last year's nest" to make the martin-box look social.

This little window was Madeline's chosen seat; and hither she brought, sometimes a book, but more frequently a portion of Miss Wimple's work from the millinery department, and wholesomely employed her mind, skilfully her fingers. Here she could look out upon the earth and sky, and enjoy, unspied, the sympathy of their desolation,—never daring to think of all the maddening memories that lay under the front windows: those she had never once approached, never even turned her eyes towards; Miss Wimple had observed that.

But on the day of the installation of the basque and the flounces, and the promotion of the skimped delaine, late in the afternoon, the twilight (falling, as Madeline sat at the side-window, gazing vacantly down upon the forlornness of the little yard, and Miss Wimple stood at the front window, gazing as abstractedly down upon the hard, pitiless cold-