What Mrs. Louder named "a throw" decorated each framed picture and each chair. The largest arm-chair was drawn up to a table covered with books and magazines: in the chair sat Mrs. Louder, reading.
At Tilly's entrance she started and turned her head, and then one could see that the tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"Now, MOTHER!" exploded Tilly. Kicking the door open, she marched into the bed-chamber. An indignant sweep of one arm sent the miscellany of gifts into a rocking-chair;an indignant curve of the other landed the baby on the bed.
Tilly turned on her mother. "Now, mother, what did you promise--HUSH! will you?" (The latter part of the sentence a fierce "ASIDE"to the infant on the bed.) In a second Mrs. Louder's arms were encircling him, and she was soothing him on her broad shoulder, where I know not how many babies have found comfort.
Jane Louder was a tall woman--tall and portly.
She had a massive repose about her, a kind of soft dignity;and a stranger would not guess how tender was her heart.
Deprecatingly she looked up at her only child, standing in judgment over her. Her eyes were fine still, though they had sparkled and wept for more than half a century. They were not gray, like Tilly's, but a deep violet, with black eyelashes and eyebrows.
Black, once, had been the hair under the widow's cap, now streaked with silver; but Jane Louder's skin was fresh and daintily tinted like her daughter's, for all its fine wrinkles.
Her voice when she spoke was mellow and slow, with a nervous vibration of apology. "Never mind, dear," she said, "I was just reading 'bout the Russians.""I KNEW it! You promised me you wouldn't cry about the Russians any more.""I know, Tilly, but Alma Brown lent this to me, herself.
There's a beautiful article in it about 'The Horrors of Hunger.'
It would make your heart ache! I wish you would read it, Tilly.""No, thank you. I don't care to have my heart ache.
I'm not going to read any more horrors about the Russians, or hear them either, if I can help it. I have to write Mr. Lossing's letters about them, and that's enough.
I've given all I can afford, and you've given more than you can afford; and I helped get up the subscription at the shops.
I've done all I could; and now I ain't going to have my feelings harrowed up any more, when it won't do me nor the Russians a mite of good.""But I cayn't HELP it, Tilly. I cayn't take any comfort in my meals, thinking of that awful black bread the poor children starve rather than eat; and, Tilly, they ain't so dirty as some folks think!
I read in a magazine how they have GOT to bathe twice a week by their religion; and there's a bath-house in every village.
Tilly, do you know how much money they've raised here?""Over three thousand. This town is the greatest town for giving--give to the cholera down South, give to Johnstown, give to Grinnell, give to cyclones, give to fires.
_The Freeman_ always starts up a subscription, and Mr. Bayard runs the thing, and Mr. Lossing always gives. Mother, I tell you HEmakes them hustle when he takes hold. He's the chairman here, and he has township chairmen appointed for every township.
He's so popular they start in to oblige him, and then, someway, he makes them all interested. I must tell you of a funny letter he had to-day from a Captain Ferguson, out at Baxter.
He's a rich farmer with lots of influence and a great worker, Mr. Lossing says. But this is 'most word for word what he wrote:
'Dear Sir: I am sorry for the Russians, but my wife is down with the la grippe, and I can't get a hired girl;so I have to stay with her. If you'll get me a hired girl, I'll get you a lot of money for the Russians.'""Did he git a girl? I mean Mr. Lossing."
"No, ma'am. He said he'd try if it was the city, but it was easier finding gold-mines than girls that would go into the country.
See here, I'm forgetting your presents. Mother, you look real dragged and--queer!""It's nothing; jist a thought kinder struck me 'bout--'bout that girl."Tilly was sorting out the parcels and explaining them;at the end of her task her mind harked back to an old grievance.
"Mother," said she, "I've been thinking for a long time, and I've made up my mind.""Yes, dearie." Mrs. Louder's eyes grew troubled.
She knew something of the quality of Tilly's mind, which resembled her father's in a peculiar immobility.
Once let her decision run into any mould (be it whatsoever it might), and let it stiffen, there was no chance, any more than with other iron things, of its bending.
"Positively I could hardly get up the stairs today," said Tilly--she was putting her jacket and hat away in her orderly fashion;of necessity her back was to Mrs. Louder--"there was such a raft of people wanting to send stuff and messages to you.
You are just working yourself to death; and, mother, I am convinced we have _got to move!_"Mrs. Louder dropped into a chair and gasped. The baby, who had fallen asleep, stirred uneasily. It was not a pretty child;its face was heavy, its little cheeks were roughened by the wind, its lower lip sagged, its chin creased into the semblance of a fat old man's. But Jane Louder gazed down on it with infinite compassion.
She stroked its head as she spoke.
"Tilly," said she, "I've been in this block, Mrs. Carleton and me, ever since it was built; and, some way, between us we've managed to keep the run of all the folks in it; at least when they were in any trouble. We've worked together like sisters.
She's 'Piscopal, and I guess I'm Unitarian; but never a word between us.
We tended the Willardses through diphtheria and the Hopkinses through small-pox, and we steamed and fumigated the rooms together.
