Aunt Barbara and Mrs. Markham did not harmonize at all. At first, when
Ethie was so sick, everything had been merged in the one absorbing
thought of her danger, and even the knowledge accidentally obtained that
Richard had paid Miss Bigelow's fare out there and would pay it back,
had failed to produce more than a passing pang in the bosom of the
close, calculating, economical Mrs. Markham; but when the danger was
past, it kept recurring again and again, with very unpleasant
distinctness, that Aunt Barbara was an expense they could well do
without. Nobody could quarrel with Aunt Barbara--she was so mild, and
gentle, and peaceable--and Mrs. Markham did not quarrel with her, but
she thought about her all the time, and fretted over her, and remembered
the letter she had written about her ways and her being good to Ethie,
and wondered what she was there for, and why she did not go home, and
asked her what time they generally cleaned house in Chicopee, and if she
dared trust her cleaning with Betty. Aunt Barbara was a great annoyance,
and she complained to Eunice and Mrs. Jones, and Melinda, who had
returned from Washington, that she was spoiling Ethelyn, babying her
so, and making her think herself so much weaker than she was.
"Mercy knew," she said, that in her day, when she was young and having
children, she did not hug the bed forever. She had something else to do,
and was up and around in a fortnight at the most. Her table wasn't
loaded down with oranges and figs, and the things they called banannys,
which fairly made her sick at her stomach. Nobody was carryin' her up
glasses of milk-punch, and lemonade, and cups of tea, at all hours of
the day. She was glad of anything, and got well the faster for it.
Needn't tell her!--it would do Ethelyn good to stir around and take the
air, instead of staying cooped up in her room, complaining that it is
hot and close there in the bedroom. "It's airy enough out doors," and
with a most aggrieved look on her face, Mrs. Markham put into the oven
the pan of soda biscuit she had been making, and then proceeded to lay
the cloth for tea.
Eunice had been home for a day or two with a felon on her thumb, and
thus a greater proportion of the work had fallen upon Mrs. Markham,
which to some degree accounted for her ill-humor. Mrs. Jones and Melinda
were spending the afternoon with her, but the latter was up in Ethie's
room. Melinda had always a good many ideas of her own, and she had
brought with her several new ones from Washington and New York, where
she had stayed for four weeks at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But Melinda,
though greatly improved in appearance, was not one whit spoiled. In
manner, and the fit of her dress, she was more like Ethelyn and Mrs.
Judge Miller, of Camden, than she once had been, and at first James was
a little afraid of her, she puffed her hair so high, and wore her gowns
so long, while his mother, looking at the stylish hat and fashionable
sack which she brought back from Gotham, said her head was turned, and
she was altogether too fine for Olney. But when, on the next rainy
Sunday, she rode to church in her father's lumber wagon, holding the
blue cotton umbrella over her last year's straw and waterproof--and when
arrived at the church she suffered James to help her to alight, jumping
over the muddy wheel, and then going straight to her accustomed seat in
the choir, which had missed her strong voice so much--the son changed
his mind, and said she was the same as ever; while after the day when
she found Mrs. Markham making soap out behind the corn-house, and
good-humoredly offered to watch it and stir it while that lady went into
the house to see to the corn pudding, which Eunice was sure to spoil if
left to her own ingenuity, the mother, too, changed her mind, and wished
Richard had been so lucky as to have fixed his choice on Melinda. But
James was far from wishing a thing which would so seriously have
interfered with his hopes and wishes. He was very glad that Richard's
preference had fallen where it did, and his cheery whistle was heard
almost constantly, and after Tim Jones told, in his blunt way, how
"Melind was tryin' to train him, and make him more like them dandies at
the big tavern in New York," he, too, began to amend, and taking Richard
for his pattern, imitated him, until he found that simple, loving Andy,
in his anxiety to please Ethelyn, had seized upon more points of
etiquette than Richard ever knew existed, and then he copied Andy,
having this in his favor: that whatever he did himself was done with a
certain grace inherent in his nature, whereas Andy's attempts were
awkward in the extreme.