CHAPTER X

JESSIE'S DECLARATION

"AND you'll stay here always, Millie! Won't you? Promise not to go away. Promise not to think about any other home."

Jessie had flown eagerly upstairs, two steps at a time, after lengthy confabulation with Miss Perkins. The state of affairs had gradually oozed out, in response to judicious squeezing; and Jessie had controlled her own ardent pleasure, lest from a sheer spirit of opposition, Miss Perkins should decide against having a permanent lodger. Difficulties lay in the path of an immediate settlement of the question. Hero was the ostensible stumbling-stone; jealousy of Jessie's love for Mildred was a more potent barrier.

Of the latter fact Jessie was ignorant, but she had abundance to say in defence of Hero. He was the dearest and sweetest of dogs! Always good, and always obedient. He never dug holes in the garden; and he was learning to rub his paws on the doormat whenever he came in. Had not aunt Barbara herself, seeing him at the occupation two days earlier, remarked that he did it "uncommon like a Christian"? Miss Perkins could not disavow so recent an utterance.

"Well, I don't know as I care—particular. It's got to be, I s'pose. Things has mostly got to be as nobody wouldn't ever choose," said Miss Perkins, In a mood of depressed philosophising. "But I'm not a-going to have a fuss made about Mildred, mind. She'll have to take things as she finds them; and if she don't like 'em, she'll have to go. And you'll have the doing of her room. I've enough of my own to see to, and it's time you should help. We shall find it a lot of bother, all the year round."

Jessie forbore to remind Miss Perkins of her oft-uttered longing for a permanent lodger. She forbore even to protest against the insinuation that hitherto she had not helped. In her eagerness to keep Mildred, she would have endured more than this.

"O I'll do the room all right," she made answer cheerfully. And the moment she could escape, she fled to Mildred's retreat.

"You will stay always, won't you, Mildred?" she reiterated.

"'Always' means a great deal. I should like to stay for a time, at any rate."

"Only for a time! Not to live here!"

"It must depend, partly, on whether I can find any work to do. I couldn't be idle, Jessie. I think I should go out of my mind. You don't know what the feeling of loneliness is—not a person in the world belonging to me; not one relation nearer than a cousin of my father's, and he is a crusty old man, who never even writes. I have no real ties now, and it is so strange."

Jessie listened seriously. "I haven't ties either, I suppose. Ought I to care, Millie? I don't think I do, very much. There are so many nice people in the world. Of course aunt Barbara is a tie; but I am not so very fond of her. I am much more fond of other friends,—of you!"

"And of the Groates', for instance?"

"Yes," blushing, "I do like Mrs. Groates. And so will you when you get to know her. But what sort of work do you want to find?"

Mildred explained slowly. She could teach, she said, if only the simpler branches of teaching were required; but she would very much prefer dressmaking. No, she had never been a dressmaker. Her father had had a good post in a country bank, and he had toiled to the last. Mildred had never had to work for her living, as a matter of necessity. She had, however, always loved work, especially dressmaking. She knew herself to be very good at cutting out and fitting. She had always made her own dresses, and often those of her friends.

Jessie listened with round eyes and exclamations barely suppressed. "It's the very thing," she could have cried, remembering the Miss Coxens, and their laments over the difficulty of obtaining any efficient help. Jessie restrained the first impulse to tell Millie her thought. It would be better to see the Miss Coxens first, and to lay the matter before them.

"I should think you might easily get dresses to make," she remarked judiciously. "We have not many dressmakers here, you know. And if you can, then you will make Old Maxham your real home! And now I've got to go out for something, and you must rest, because you look quite tired with so much talking."

Impulsive Jessie was half-way down the street, before a recollection surged up of the last time she had seen Miss Sophy Coxen. With the remembrance came an unpleasantly hot blush. But Miss Sophy Coxen had to be encountered some time; and the present hour was as good as any other. So Jessie hurried on.

"Dear me! Why, it actually is Jessie Perkins at last!" declared Miss Coxen, peeping out of the window. "I began to wonder if she ever meant to come near us again."

"And what a colour she has, to be sure!" chimed in Miss Sophy. "She hadn't that when I saw her over the way—you know, sister! She was as pasty as a tallow candle, and as shaky as anything."

"I wouldn't say one word to Jessie about that, Sophy, if I was you. Girls don't like to have it thought that they care for anybody in particular, you know; and I dare say it would vex her to know that we think what we do think."

"Ah, well, we know what we know, and nothing can undo that," sighed Miss Sophy oracularly. "But mum's the word, sister."

Miss Sophy spoke the word in happy oblivion of the fact that she had already told her story to at least fifteen individuals belonging to Old Maxham.

"Well, Jessie, how d'you do? Come in, my dear," Miss Coxen said with great cordiality, and both sisters squeezed Jessie's hands in affectionate style.

Jessie, still wearing a high colour, seated herself promptly with her back to the window, and proceeded to pour forth particulars of Mildred and of Mildred's prospects. This was a disappointment to the pair, for they wanted her to talk about Jack, not about Mildred, and Jessie refused to be turned aside from her subject.

She had so often heard them lament the absence of any good dressmaking in the place, except their own, that she was greatly disappointed to find her overtures on behalf of Millie met with blank looks and solemn silence. Miss Coxen smoothed her apron, and Miss Sophy pulled her ringlets, and neither uttered any response.

"I thought you'd be quite delighted," hazarded Jessie.

"My dear, you expect—really—too much!" Sophy took her cue from Miss Coxen's face. "That we should be delighted—" Miss Sophy began to sniffle, "delighted—to have the bread taken out of our mouths!" Another sniffle,—"By this interloper from foreign parts—"

"But—" protested the dismayed Jessie.

"She is no doubt quite an experienced dressmaker. O yes, and up in all the fashions! She will leave us far behind!" sighed Miss Coxen.

"And to think of Miss Perkins being the one to bring this calamity on our heads," wept Miss Sophy—"our old friend, Miss Perkins! And Jessie!—that I dandled on my lap, when she wasn't that high—" and Miss Sophy sniffled anew.

"But I thought you wanted help so much. I'm sure you have always said so."

"O dear, dear, how people do misunderstand one!" moaned Miss Sophy in mournful tones.

"A little moderate amount of help, my dear, just at pressing times, we might require; but not to be supplanted,—not to have the food taken out of our mouths by a London dressmaker," murmured Miss Coxen. "A first-class London dressmaker!"

No doubt, Jessie, in describing her friend's powers, real or supposed, had laid the colours on rather thickly, and Miss Coxen had immediately proceeded to deepen them still further.

"Millie isn't a London dressmaker. She isn't anything of that sort. Why, I told you she had always lived in the country, and had only done dressmaking for her own amusement. And I think you ought to be glad to help her,—all alone in the world as she is, with no home or friends. Other people have tried to help her, at any rate. She won't take the bread out of anybody's mouth; she is a great deal more likely to take it out of her own. Mildred isn't at all a sort of person to do harm to other people. And you have often and often told me that you might easily take in a lot more work, if only you had a third pair of hands to depend upon. And now that you might have the third pair, you just turn against it."

Jessie's little outburst was not without effect. The sisters looked one at another, shook their respective heads, and finally promised to "think about things."

"We couldn't always give her work, that is certain. Not when there isn't much doing, you know. But just now and then, perhaps. We might try what she is worth, you know. People so often say they can work who really can't put two breadths together. But of course we should like to do anything we can to help her. You ought to be sure of that, my dear. And if we find her capable and not pushing, and willing to do what she is told, why, then, just once in a way—"