A Daily Rate (12 page)

with a good supply of sweet and Irish potatoes on the grate below, grouped about a huge baked apple dumpling which Molly had hastily concocted, and Molly was straining the spinach and subjecting it to a rubbing through the colander, after which it went back on the stove to keep hot before its butter and last peppering were applied. She looked doubtfully at the water the spinach was cooked in and then with a daring glance at the clock rushed about to carry out another resolution, calling to Miss Hannah:

“You ken put on the soup plates of your a mine to. I’ve found I can make a taste of spinach soup with the water and some milk and flour and butter. It’ll make things seem nicer I guess for the first night, and don’t take a minute. That’ll give the rolls time to get a little browner before they’re needed, you know.” Then she began to sing at the top of her voice:

“Am I a soldier of the cross,--”

Molly Poppleton always sang at the top of her lungs when she had some important work to do or was in an unusual hurry with her work. It made her very happy to have a good deal of work, and hard work at that.

Celia, opening the front door with her latch-key just then, heard the singing and rejoiced. There was the old Molly. She had not become discouraged and gone home, but was at work with heart and voice as in their old kitchen at home. She ran out into the dining-room to see how things were getting on before she went upstairs. But she stopped in the doorway astounded. Even her highest hopes had not realized the change there would be. What made it? Was it the shining tablecloth, or the glistening glasses, or the knives and forks laid straight, or what? A nice square cake of butter was in each butter-plate at the ends of the table. The salts were smoothed off and stamped with the bottom of the salt-cellars. The plates were in a pile at one end of the table instead of being upside down on the napkins at each place. Where were the plates of crackers and gingersnaps which had not failed to appear at every dinner since she had been boarding there? Where was the inevitable dish of prunes? Gone, and in its place a dish of translucent cranberry jelly which Molly had found time somehow to fix. It was all very wonderful. Even the gas had a clean globe on it. Celia wondered that so much had been accomplished in one short afternoon. She heard the door being opened from the outside and hurried into the kitchen, closing the dining-room door behind her first. This must burst upon them all at once when they entered the dining-room.

Aunt Hannah was taking the brown balls from the roll pan and piling them on a plate, when she went into the kitchen, and she greeted her with:

“Celia, go upstairs and wash your hands and then come down and fix the celery. Molly and I haven’t a second to do it, and it is time to ring that bell in five minutes. Have the boarders come yet?”

Celia rushed away and was soon back, bearing aunt Hannah’s white apron and a brush to smooth her hair that she might not be delayed from coming to dinner on account of her appearance, and at last the dinner was ready and it was time to ring the bell. She put the two glasses of celery on the table, and handing Molly the bell went into the parlor. She did not wish anybody yet to know she had a right in the kitchen. She was just the ribbon girl from Dobson & Co.’s. There were things she wanted to accomplish first which could better be done that way, she thought.

The bell rang and the boarders trooped down. The little old lady from upstairs was first and interrupted the advance of the others, for a moment. She walked into the dining-room followed by Miss Burns. Both stopped blinking in the doorway and staring around, before they slowly walked in a dazed way to their respective places. The two girls from the three-cent store became embarrassed, and stood back awkwardly against the wall staring undisguisedly. The three young men came after, Harry Knowles ahead.

He drew a long whistle, and turning on his heel, started back into the hall again. “Whew! this is great!” he said as he went. “I’m going to wash my hands and comb my hair. I don’t fit in there.

Aunt Hannah with her grey hair and placid face and grey dress with its white apron presided well over that table. The dishes might be thick and the tablecloth coarse, but no dinner on any rich man’s table was ever cooked or served better, nor more thoroughly enjoyed. After they were seated Miss Burns began with her nervous little giggle:

“Oh really, now, this is simply,—simply—simply fine, don’t you know. This is quite a change, isn’t it, dear?” and she looked across the table at Celia who was passing celery and handing soup plates as aunt Hannah ladled out the pale green tempting soup. Her guests ate of it in wonder. They were not acquainted with purée of spinach. They wondered how it got colored, and what it was anyway and the most of them ate every drop in their plates, some of them tilting the plates to accomplish it. The three-cent store girls and the university student asked for more and got it, and then Molly, her sleeves rolled decorously down and a white apron over her dark one, took out the soup and brought in the platter with that great brown perfectly cooked roast, and brought potatoes and spinach and hot plates, while aunt Hannah with experienced hand and keen knife, sharpened by herself, cut great juicy slices in generous plenty and filled the plates.

They were a rather silent table that first night. They were embarrassed to a degree by their surroundings which were so familiar and yet so unfamiliar. And then the dinner was absorbing. It absorbed their thoughts and they absorbed it.

When it came time for the dessert they sat back satisfied, and feeling that perhaps it were as well that the inevitable pie, which they always had for dessert, did not come to spoil this ideal repast. But they forgot such feelings when that great pudding was brought in, its crust browned to a nicety on the top, and light as feathers when it was cut, its luscious quarters of amber apples in the bottom, and a dressing of some sweet transparent syrup with just a dash of cinnamon.

“I tell you what!” said Harry Knowles, leaning back in his chair to fold his napkin and talking in an aside to Celia, “that was the best dinner I have tasted since I left home. I feel as if I had been invited out, don’t you? I don’t know what it means, do you? She certainly can’t keep it up. I suppose she’s just standing treat for the first night, but I declare, if I could have meals like that, I’m not sure but I might be a different kind of a fellow and amount to something. How’s our lamp getting on? I thought of a way to fix the spring in that sofa the other night. I believe I’ll stay in and try it tonight.”

Aunt Hannah, as they were leaving the table, apologized for not having put the rooms in order that day. She had only been in power, she said, since one o’clock, and there had not been time to do everything. She hoped to have things in better shape very soon if they would all be patient. Then the boarders went into the parlor to whisper with one another about that good dinner, and Celia slipped unseen out to the kitchen to exult and to help.

OUT in the street, not far from that boarding-house, two young men met. “How are you, Horace? Glad to see you, old fellow! You look as thin as a rail. What do they feed you on down in that miserable hole where you hide yourself? I say, Horace, you ought to have either a new boarding-place or a wife.”

The other man laughed. “I’m hunting one,” he said, “that is, a new boarding-house, not a wife.”

“Well, you may find the one while in search of the other, you know. They always used to say, when we were children, that if you lost a thing you never could find it till you lost something else and went to hunting that. Now you haven’t exactly lost a wife, you know, because you never had one. So that’s just as bad, but maybe you’ll find her. However, I fear that any one you’d find in hunting a boarding-house wouldn’t be worth her salt. That’s my experience. Say, old fellow, why don’t you come up our way and live? It isn’t much further, and you are a good walker. You could walk to that blessed church of yours, if you still hold to your puritanical ideas about not riding on the trolley on Sunday. Now there’s the place Royce boards; that would be first-rate, and I happen to know there’s a vacant room there now, second story front, fine sunny room, all conveniences and splendid board.”

“But I can’t afford second story fronts, Roger; my salary has mostly to be paid by myself yet. You know we are building and the church is just struggling to live. It is all made up of poor people.”

“Well, what in the world did you go down there for? You might have had a church in Germantown if you would have taken it, and you also had a chance out in West Philadelphia I heard. Why, you’ve friends enough to have got you hearings in several big churches down in the heart of the city where they pay big salaries. I’m sure I don’t see any virtue in your hiding your light under a bushel. For my part, I think you arc as good, if not better, than any preacher I’ve heard in the city, if you only would consent to let go of a few high and impossible views you have about social equality. However, I suppose that’s neither here nor there. You’re here and the churches are there, and so it will continue to be, I presume, in spite of all I can say, and there’ll be nothing for me but to tend you in your last sickness and pay the funeral expenses, if you go on at this rate. I must see what I can do about getting our church to help that mission of yours, if you persist in your folly.”

“I wish you would, Roger, for they need help, and a church in this neighborhood is much more needed than in the quarters you have mentioned, where there is a church of some sort every two blocks almost. But I must go on, for 1 have a meeting this evening, and I want to go to one more place before I go to church.”

They parted, the young man Roger wishing the other would reconsider, and come higher up in town to board, and thus be near his friends. Then Horace Stafford went on his way, and having consulted a list of addresses in his notebook, in a moment more paused at a door and rang a bell and the door was opened by Celia.

Now Celia was very happy over the successful dinner. She had lingered about the halls catching words that the boarders had dropped, and she knew that they were intensely pleased and surprised. When she was happy or excited a clear red color came into her cheeks and a brightness into her deep, grey-blue eyes which made her very beautiful. She was not always beautiful, although she was always pleasant to look at: certain conditions, however, had the power of making this charm bloom into beauty. To-night the color and the shine were there, and she seemed a charming picture to the young man who had spent the afternoon in calling at boarding houses, and had begun to know just what to expect to see when the door opened. He was agreeably surprised, therefore, as he stepped into the hall and waited while Celia called aunt Hannah, for he had said he wanted to see Mrs. Morris, having been directed there for board. He glanced into the parlor and sighed. It was the same grade of parlor he had grown to expect, a dreary enough place, but he did not know what was the matter with it, and as he should have to spend very little time in it, it did not make great difference. He heard a low cultured voice upstairs saying: “Tell Molly I will send her some in a moment,” and then Miss Grant appeared before him.

It is true she did not know much about taking new boarders, but she did the best she could. She told him there was one room left vacant that day, that is was not in order yet, but if he cared to see it, he might come upstairs and do so. He followed her to the room. It happened to be the second story front. It was not large, for economy of space had been exercised to a great degree in the building of that house, but it had a sunny exposure, and the young man knew by an uncomfortable experience in a dark room that that was a great advantage in a room. The bed did not look very soft nor inviting, and the two chairs in the room were rather dilapidated. The bureau was a cheap one with a rheumatic castor, which gave it a reeling appearance. The bed clothing was tumbled in a heap on the bed, as the clerk had left it. Altogether it was not just what one would call luxury. But it was so much better than some the weary man had seen that he ventured to ask timidly, “Could I have some sort of a table to write on?”

Miss Hannah thought a moment and told him that she thought he could. He asked the price and it proved to be not much more than he was now paying. After a little reflection he said he would take it. Afterward, when he had gone downstairs to the parlor to wait for the supper which she had said he might have, in response to his question if it was too late for the evening meal, he wondered why he had done so. What power had been upon him upstairs to make him determine to cast his lot in here? It was not that room, even though it was a second story front, for that was very forlorn in the dim flickering gaslight. It was not the general look of the house, for that certainly was not attractive. And now as he sat in the dimness of the shadow of the front window, and watched some of the boarders at the further end of the room, he felt that same sense of desolation steal over him which he had felt in so many boarding-houses that afternoon. He could not hope to find many congenial spirits here. He sighed. It was hard not to have some pleasant friends about one who could talk of the things one knew and loved, when one came in at night after a hard day’s work. But as Miss Hannah came back through the hall and in that quiet sweet voice of hers that made one feel as if a benediction had been pronounced upon one, told him that he could come to the dining-room now, he followed her and knew that it was his landlady who had drawn him to select this as his temporary home. She seated him and poured his coffee, and then excused herself and left him. He looked about him after he was left alone, and had bowed his head a moment, more in supplication that the Lord would give him rest and strength for his work, than in thankfulness for his food, for he had learned that there were kinds of food which were as hard to eat as they were to digest. With pleased surprise he saw the tablecloth was clean and free from crumbs. The plate before him held food as appetizing as any he could remember in pleasanter homes than those he had occupied lately. Of course the potatoes had been heated over and were not so nice as when first served, but the meat was tender and juicy, and he ate it with a relish, for he was weary and had not had anything to really tempt his appetite for six weeks, that being the length of time since he had gone to his friend Roger’s, to dinner. Those delicious rolls and that coffee were enough in themselves to satisfy a hungry man, and he began to feel that he had not chosen his home amiss. Then the kitchen door opened, and Celia entered bringing a bounteous plate of apple dumpling covered with plenty of sauce. She put it down beside his place and began to remove the empty dishes, asking him if he would have anything more.