“It's time for Vilola to come home again, and B. F. Brown is havin' paintin' and paperin' done,” said Mrs. Abner Wells to her sister. Her sister's name was Mrs. Francis Baker, and she had come over with her work and her baby to spend the afternoon.
“Well, I thought there was something goin' on there when I came past,” responded Mrs. Baker. “I noticed that the front chamber windows were open, and I saw some old room paper flyin' round the yard.”
“The man just finished it — went away since dinner.”
“That front room is Vilola's, ain't it?”
“Yes, of course it is. Didn't you know it?”
“Why, when did he have that room papered before?”
“He had it papered only the last time she came,” said Mrs. Wells, impressively.
“Why, that couldn't have been more'n a year ago.”
“Of course it couldn't. Don't Vilola Brown always come once a year and spend six months with her father, and then go back to Jefferson and spend six months with her mother? Ain't she done that ever since her father and mother separated when she was a baby? I should think you might know that as well as I do, Elmira Baker.”
“Oh, of course I do,” said Mrs. Baker. “I was only talking at random. I was only wondering what he was having that room papered for if it was done only a year ago.”
“Well, I can tell you,” said Mrs. Wells, with asperity. “Some folks have money to throw away for nothing, or think they do. They may find out they don't have any more than some other folks in the long run. I can tell you why. When we had that heavy spell of rain last fall it leaked in that room around the chimney and there was a place about as big as a saucer stained, that's why.”
“Was that all?”
“Yes, that was all. B. F. Brown ain't goin' to have his precious Vilola comin' home to sleep in a room that's got a spot on the paper, if it ain't any bigger than the head of a pin. I don't know what he thinks that girl is.”
“Couldn't he have had the paper pieced?”
“Oh no. It was faded just a little. He wouldn't have Vilola sleep in a room with a patch of paper showin'. I guess he wouldn't.”
“Now, Susan, you don't mean he's so silly as that?”
“Yes, I do. I had it from the woman he's been having to clean the house. I tell you that house has been cleaned from attic to cellar. Every carpet has been up. Well, it needed it bad enough. I don't believe it had been swept since Vilola went away last July.”
“I wonder if B. F. Brown makes much money in his store?” said Mrs. Baker.
“I don't believe he makes much,” said Mrs. Wells, with angry exultation. “I know lots of folks that won't trade there. They say he never has just what they want. They say Deering, and Lawton, or Hapgood & Lewis have a great deal better assortment. I ain't been inside the door since I bought my brown cashmere there, and it faded so after I'd only wore it six months, and he wouldn't allow me anything for it. I told him then it was the last trading I'd do in his store, and it was the last.”
“I wonder if she's comin' to-night?” said Mrs. Baker.
“No, she ain't comin' to-night. The six months with her mother ain't up till next-week Thursday. I've kept account.”
“It's a queer way for folks to live, ain't it?” said Mrs. Baker. “I rather think it's queer.”
“How long is it since they've lived together? I declare, I've forgot.”
“I ain't forgot. Vilola Brown is just seven years younger than I be. She's nineteen, and her father and mother ain't lived together since she was three years old. That makes sixteen years. I was ten years old when they separated and her mother went to Jefferson to live, and he stayed here, and one had Vilola six months and the other six months, turn and turn about, ever since, and he's paid his wife ten dollars a week all this time, and nobody knows how much Vilola has cost him. She's had everything, and she's never raised her finger to earn a penny herself.”
“What do you s'pose the trouble was?”
“Well, they were dreadful close-mouthed, but I guess it was pretty well known at the time what the matter was. I've heard mother talk about it with the neighbors. Mrs. B. F. Brown had an awful temper, and so has B. F. They couldn't get along together.”
“There wasn't anything against her, was there?”
“No, I never heard a word against her. She was a dreadful pretty woman. I can just remember how she looked. It was when they used to wear curls, and she had real feathery light ones, and the pinkest cheeks, and used to dress real tasty, too. I guess folks sided with her pretty generally. I don't believe B. F. Brown has ever stood quite so well here as he did before.”
“Vilola don't take much after her mother, does she?”
“No, she don't. There ain't a homelier girl anywheres around than Vilola Brown, and she hasn't got a mite of style about her, either.”
B. F. Brown was rather laboriously making milk toast for supper. By dint of long practice he could make milk toast, griddle cakes, and fry a slice of meat or fish and boil a potato. He was not an expert at any household tasks, though he had served long, having an unusual measure of masculine clumsiness. Although he was not a large man, his fingers were large, with blunt, round ends. He had no deftness of touch. He burned himself seeing if the toast was brown, and finally burned the toast. When the meal was ready he called the cat, which was asleep in a round, yellow ring of luxurious comfort beside the stove. The cat rose lazily at his summons, rounding its back and stretching. The cat belonged to Vilola, and he cherished it like a child during the six months of her absence with her mother. “If anything happened to that cat, I don't know what my daughter would say,” he told his clerk, John Bartlett. B. F. Brown kept a small dry-goods store on the village Main Street, and John Bartlett, who was as old as himself and had been with him ever since he was in business, and a boy constituted his entire force of trade.
“I should think she would have to take the cat with her when she goes to stay with her mother, she thinks so much of her,” replied John Bartlett. The conversation had taken place upon the occasion of a temporary loss and recovery of the cat.
“Oh, she has another cat she keeps there — a tiger,” said B. F. Brown. “She leaves him there when she comes here; but she don't think near so much of him as she does of this yellow one.”
Tonight, as B. F. Brown placed a saucer filled with a share of his own supper on the floor beside the stove for the cat, he talked to it with a pitiful, clumsy, masculine crooning: “Poor kitty, poor kitty! There now; eat your supper, kitty.”
“Guess that pussy cat will be glad to see her,” he muttered, as he sat down to his own supper. Every now and then as he ate he paused, with his fork suspended halfway to his mouth with a bit of toast, and looked upward with an ecstatic expression. His soul was tasting to the full such a savor of anticipatory happiness that he had small comprehension of physical sensations. After he had finished supper he washed his dishes with painful care. He was particular to put every dish in its place on the pantry shelves. He had had the pantry thoroughly cleaned and all the dishes washed and rearranged, and he was fearful lest he disorder them before his daughter arrived. Then he went back to the kitchen and surveyed the clean, shining, yellow surface of the floor anxiously. He had had that newly painted, and he was desperately afraid of marring it before his daughter saw it. He took off his shoes and put on slippers before stepping on it. He kept his slippers in the shed for that purpose and entered through the shed door. He spied a few crumbs on the floor, which he carefully gathered up with his blunted fingers; then he saw a dusty place, which he wiped over with his pocket handkerchief.
He had planned many surprises for his daughter, as he always did on her homecoming. This time he had one which was, in his estimation, almost stupendous. He had purchased a sideboard. Vilola had always talked about a sideboard for the dining room some time when they got rich. She had never asked for one. That was not Vilola's way. She had seldom asked for anything in her whole life, but her father had taken note and remembered. The week before he had gone about anxiously pricing sideboards. He had saved up a certain amount for one. When he found that he could not only purchase a sideboard with his hoard, but a nice little rocking-chair for Vilola's room as well, he was jubilant.
He went home whistling under his breath like a boy. He had an idea that there should be a rich display of some sort on a sideboard, and he searched the house for suitable ornaments. He found an old-fashioned glass preserve dish on a standard, a little painted mug which had been his in babyhood, and a large cup and saucer with “Gift of Friendship” on the front in gold letters. He arranged these in a row on the sideboard with the tall glass dish in the center. Then he stood off and surveyed the cheap oak piece with its mirror and gaudily carved doors and its decorations doubtfully, not being entirely satisfied.
Then all at once his face lit up. He hastened into his own bedroom out of the sitting room, and brought forth in triumph his last year's Christmas present from Vilola. It was a brush-and-comb tray decorated with blue roses. He dusted it carefully with his pocket handkerchief and placed it on the sideboard to the right of the cup and saucer. In the tray were the nice new brush and comb which had been a part of the present. He had never used them. He thought too much of them for that. He removed the brush and comb and stood for a minute with them in his hand, with his head on one side, surveying the effect of the sideboard without them.
Then he replaced the brush and comb in the tray. He was fully satisfied.
“She'll be tickled 'most to death,” he said. He whistled again as he went upstairs to see Vilola's room. He whistled “Annie