Kate Wiggin - Ladies-In-Waiting

Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

Ladies-In-Waiting

FOREWORD

It may be urged that all proper heroines go through a period of uncertainty before giving their hands and hearts in marriage. Occasionally, however, there are longer seasons of indecision, incident to pride, high temper, or misunderstanding on the ladys side, or to poverty, undue timidity, or lack of high pressure on the part of the gentleman. I have christened the heroines of this volume Ladies-in-Waiting, and that no mental picture may be formed of Queen and Court and Maids of Honor I have asked the artist to portray for the frontispiece a marriageable maiden seated pensively upon a hillside. Her attitude is plainly one of suspended animation while the new moon above her shoulders suggests to the reader that she will not wait in vain.

August 11, 1919

MISS THOMASINA TUCKER

I

Good-bye, Miss Tucker!

Good luck, Miss Tommy!

Bye, bye, Tomsie!

Dont stay away too long!

These sentiments were being called from the Hoboken dock to the deck of an ocean steamer, while a young lady, buried in bouquets and bonbons, leaned over the rail, sparkling, inciting, compelling, responding.

Take care of yourself, Tommy!

I dont see but that I must! Nobody else to do it! she responded saucily.

You wouldnt let em if they tried! This from a rosy-cheeked youngster who was as close to the waters edge as safety permitted. Say, did you guess what my floral offering was to be when you trimmed your hat? I am flattered!

Sorry! The hat was trimmed weeks ago, and Im wearing your bouquet because it matches.

Thanks, awfully, replied the crestfallen youth. Plans for reduction of head-size constantly on file in Miss Tuckers office.

Just Carls luck to hit on a match.

Dont see any particular luck in being accessory to a hat trimming, grumbled Carl.

Write now and then, Miss Tommy, wont you? said a fellow with eyeglasses and an air of fashion.

Wont promise! Ill wait till Im rich enough to cable!

Shilling a words expensive, but you can send em to me collect. My word is Hopeful,at which the little party laughed.

Register another, and make it Uncertain, called the girl roguishly, seeing that no one was paying any attention to her friends and their nonsense.

London first, is it? asked the rosy youth. Decided on your hotel?

Hotel? Its going to be my share of a modest Bloomsbury lodging, she answered. Got to sing my way from a third-floor-back in a side street to a gorgeous suite at the Ritz!

Well watch you! cried three in chorus.

But wed rather hear you, darling, said a nice, tailor-made girl, whose puffy eyelids looked as if she had been crying.

Blessed lamb! I hope Ill be better worth hearing! Oh, do go home, all of you; especially you, Jessie! My courage is oozing out at the heels of my shoes. Disappear! Ive been farewelling actively for an hour and casually for a week. If they dont take off the gangplank in a minute or two I shant have pluck enough to stick to the ship.

You cant expect us to brace you up, Tommy, said the rosy youth. Were losing too much by it. Come along back! Whats the matter with America?

Dont talk to her that way, Carl,and the tailor-made girl looked at him reproachfully. You know shes got nobody and nothing to come back to. Shes given up her room. Shes quarreled with her beastly uncle at last; all her belongings are in the hold of the steamer, and shes made up her mind.

All ashore thats going ashore! The clarion tones of the steward rang through the air for the third time, and the loud beating of the ships gong showed that the last moment had come. The gangplank was removed and the great liner pushed off and slowly wended her way down-river, some of the more faithful ones in the crowd waving handkerchiefs until she was a blur in the distance.

Well, theres no truer way of showing loyalty than by going to Hoboken to see a friend off, said the eyeglassed chap as he walked beside Jessie Macleod to the ferry. I wouldnt do it for anybody but Tommy.

Nor I! exclaimed the rosy youth. Good old Tommy! I wonder whether shell sing and have a career, or fall in love over there?

She might do both, I should think; at least it has been done, though not, perhaps, with conspicuous success, was Carls reply.

Whatever she does, weve lost her, sighed the girl; and our little set will be so dull without Tommy!

Fergus Appleton had leaned over the deck rail for a few moments before the ship started on her voyage; leaned there idly and indifferently, as he did most things, smoking his cigarette with an air of complete detachment from the world. He was going to no one, and leaving no one behind. He had money enough to live on, but life had always been something of a bore to him and he could not have endured it without regular occupation. His occasional essays on subjects connected with architecture, his critical articles in similar fields, his travels in search of wider information, the book on which he was working at the moment,these kept him busy and gave him a sense of being tolerably useful in his generation. The particular group of juveniles shouting more or less intimate remarks to a girl passenger on board the steamer attracted his attention for a moment.

They are very young, he thought, or they would realize that they are all revealing themselves with considerable frankness, although nobody seems to be listening but me!

He would not have listened, as a matter of fact, had it not been for the voice of the girl they called Tommy. It was not loud, but it had the quality of a golden bell, and Fergus was susceptible to a beautiful voice. One other thingthe slightest possible thingenlisted his notice. She wore a great bunch of mignonette stuck in the waistband of her green cloth dress, and her small hat had a flat wreath of the same flower. Mignonette was, perhaps, the only growing thing of which Fergus Appleton ever took note, and its perfume was the only one that particularly appealed to his rather dull sense of smell; the reason being that in the old garden of the house in which he was born there was always a huge straggling patch of mignonette. His mother used to sit there on summer mornings and read to him, and when he lay on his back in the sunshine he used to watch the butterflies and humming-birds and trees, and sniff the fragrance that filled the air. When his mother died, he wandered into the garden, sought the familiar corner, and flung himself on the bed of mignonette to cry his heart outthe lonely heart of an eight-year-old boy. That was five and twenty years ago, but he never passed a florists open door in summer-time without remembering that despairing hour and the fragrance of the flowers, bruised with his weight and moist with his tears.

The girl vanished the moment the steamer was out of sight of the dock, and Fergus did not give her another thought for a day or two. He had liked her green cloth dress and the hat that framed her young, laughing, plucky face. He had thought her name suited her, and wondered what dignified appellation had been edited, cut, and metamorphosed to make Tommy, deciding after a look at the passenger list that it was Thomasina, and that the girl must be Miss Thomasina Tucker, an alliterative combination which did not appeal to his literary taste.