Jessie flew with mischievous delight to satisfy herself of the truth of this marvel. “It’s so, Christie,” she said laughingly—“three flour-sacks apiece; but I’m jealous: yours are all marked ‘superfine,’ and mine ‘middlings.’”
Mr. Carr had remained uneasily watching Christie’s shadowed face.
“What matters?” she said drily. “The accommodation is all in keeping.”
“It will be better in a day or two,” he continued, casting a longing look towards the door—the first refuge of masculine weakness in an impending domestic emergency. “I’ll go and see what can be done,” he said feebly, with a sidelong impulse towards the opening and freedom. “I’ve got to see Fairfax again to-night any way.”
“One moment, father,” said Christie, wearily. “Did you know anything of this place and these—these people—before you came?”
“Certainly—of course I did,” he returned, with the sudden testiness of disturbed abstraction. “What are you thinking of? I knew the geological strata and the—the report of Fairfax and his partners before I consented to take charge of the works. And I can tell you that there is a fortune here. I intend to make my own terms, and share in it.”
“And not take a salary or some sum of money down?” said Christie, slowly removing her bonnet in the same resigned way.
“I am not a hired man, or a workman, Christie,” said her father sharply. “You ought not to oblige me to remind you of that.”
“But the hired men—the superintendent and his workmen—were the only ones who ever got anything out of your last experience with Colonel Waters at La Grange, and—and we at least lived among civilized people there.”
“These young men are not common people, Christie; even if they have forgotten the restraints of speech and manners, they’re gentlemen.”
“Who are willing to live like—like negroes.”
“You can make them what you please.”
Christie raised her eyes. There was a certain cynical ring in her father’s voice that was unlike his usual hesitating abstraction. It both puzzled and pained her.
“I mean,” he said hastily, “that you have the same opportunity to direct the lives of these young men into more regular, disciplined channels that I have to regulate and correct their foolish waste of industry and material here. It would at least beguile the time for you.”
Fortunately for Mr. Carr’s escape and Christie’s uneasiness, Jessie, who had been examining the details of the living-room, broke in upon this conversation.
“I’m sure it will be as good as a perpetual picnic. George Kearney says we can have a cooking-stove under the tree outside at the back, and as there will be no rain for three months we can do the cooking there, and that will give us more room for—for the piano when it comes; and there’s an old squaw to do the cleaning and washing-up any day—and—and—it will be real fun.”
She stopped breathlessly, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes—a charming picture of youth and trustfulness. Mr. Carr had seized the opportunity to escape.
“Really, now, Christie,” said Jessie confidentially, when they were alone, and Christie had begun to unpack her trunk, and to mechanically put her things away, “they’re not so bad.”
“Who?” asked Christie.
“Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and the lot, provided you don’t look at their clothes. And think of it! they told me—for they tell one EVERYTHING in the most alarming way—that those clothes were bought to please US. A scramble of things bought at La Grange, without reference to size or style. And to hear these creatures talk, why, you’d think they were Astors or Rothschilds. Think of that little one with the curls—I don’t believe he is over seventeen, for all his baby moustache—says he’s going to build an assembly hall for us to give a dance in next month; and apologizes the next breath to tell us that there isn’t any milk to be had nearer than La Grange, and we must do without it, and use syrup in our tea to-morrow.”
“And where is all this wealth?” said Christie, forcing herself to smile at her sister’s animation.
“Under our very feet, my child, and all along the river. Why, what we thought was pure and simple mud is what they call ‘gold-bearing cement.’”
“I suppose that is why they don’t brush their boots and trousers, it’s so precious,” returned Christie drily. “And have they ever translated this precious dirt into actual coin?”
“Bless you, yes. Why, that dirty little gutter, you know, that ran along the side of the road and followed us down the hill all the way here, that cost them—let me see—yes, nearly sixty thousand dollars. And fancy! papa’s just condemned it—says it won’t do; and they’ve got to build another.”
An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie’s attention to her troubled eyebrows.
“Don’t worry about our disappointment, dear. It isn’t so very great. I dare say we’ll be able to get along here in some way, until papa is rich again. You know they intend to make him share with them.”
“It strikes me that he is sharing with them already,” said Christie, glancing bitterly round the cabin; “sharing everything—ourselves, our lives, our tastes.”
“Ye-e-s!” said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent. “Yes, even these:” she showed two dice in the palm of her little hand. “I found ‘em in the drawer of our dressing-table.”
“Throw them away,” said Christie impatiently.
But Jessie’s small fingers closed over the dice. “I’ll give them to the little Kearney. I dare say they were the poor boy’s playthings.”
The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, however, had lifted Christie out of her sublime resignation. “For Heaven’s sake, Jessie,” she said, “look around and see if there is anything more!”
To make sure, they each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary. “This seems to be Latin,” said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book. “I can’t read it.”
“It’s just as well you shouldn’t,” said Christie shortly, whose ideas of a general classical impropriety had been gathered from pages of Lempriere’s dictionary. “Put it back directly.”
Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to the corner, and uttered an exclamation. “Oh, Christie! here are some letters tied up with a ribbon.”
They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling a faint odor of refinement and of the pressed flowers that peeped from between the loose leaves. “I see, ‘My darling Fairfax.’ It’s from some woman.”
“I don’t think much of her, whosoever she is,” said Christie, tossing the intact packet back into the corner.
“Nor I,” echoed Jessie.
Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently the circumstance did make them think more of HIM, for a minute later, when they had reentered their own room, Christie remarked, “The idea of petting a man by his family name! Think of mamma ever having called papa ‘darling Carr’!”
“Oh, but his family name isn’t Fairfax,” said Jessie hastily; “that’s his FIRST name, his Christian name. I forget what’s his other name, but nobody ever calls him by it.”
“Do you mean,” said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful deliberation—“do you mean to say that we’re expected to fall in with this insufferable familiarity? I suppose they’ll be calling US by our Christian names next.”
“Oh, but they do!” said Jessie, mischievously.
“What!”
“They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if Christie played.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that you did,” answered Jessie, with an affectation of cherubic simplicity. “You do, dear; don’t you? . . . There, don’t get angry, darling; I couldn’t flare up all of a sudden in the face of that poor little creature; he looked so absurd—and so—so honest.”