Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and had rented his house with all the furniture, except such articles as his wife insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their marriage, the Boston rocker in which her old mother had sat until the day she died, the cradle in which she had rocked her baby boy who was lying in the Langley graveyard, were dear to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she could have no use for them, there was enough of sentiment in her nature to make her cling to them as something of the past, and so they were boxed up and forwarded by freight to Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed them a week later.
The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of Mrs. Frank, who, in her traveling dress of some stuff goods of a plaided pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste, felt herself perfectly au fait, until she reached Springfield, where Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a tall, elegant-looking young lady, entered the car and took a seat in front of her. Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs. Atherton at once, and guessed that her companion was the young lady from Collingwood.
Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noticing every article of their costumes, from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty cars than her buff and purple plaid.
"I ain't like them, and never shall be," she said to herself, with a bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. "I ain't like them, and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going to be grand. I shall never get used to it," and the hot tears sprang to her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so hard.
But Dolly did not know how readily people can forget the life of toil behind them, and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from Collingwood, in which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats, laughing and chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman in the big plaids who stood watching them with a rising feeling of jealousy and resentment, because she was not noticed.
But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw and recognized her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:
"For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys, our new neighbors." Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said: "Ah, I did not know you were on the train."
"I sat right behind you," was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious reply; and then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or not, she introduced her husband.
"Yes, Mr. Tracy—how do you do?" was Mrs. Atherton's response; but she did not in return introduce the young girl, whose dark eyes were scanning the strangers so curiously; and this Dolly took as a slight, and inwardly resented.
But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her, and that was something, and helped to keep her spirits up as she was driven along the turnpike to the entrance of the park.
On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with snow. But it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance, and beauty, and as the carriage passed up the broad, smooth avenue which led to the house, and Dolly's eye wandered over the well-kept grounds, sweet with the scent of newly-mown grass, and filled with every adornment which taste can devise or money procure, she felt within her the first stirring of the pride, and satisfaction, and self-assertion which were to grow upon her so rapidly and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who had washed, and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in Langley, into the arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich, and looked down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however, she was very meek and humble, and trembled as she alighted from the carriage before the great stone house which was to be her home.
"Isn't this grand, Dolly?" her husband said, rubbing his hands together, and looking about him complacently.
"Yes, very grand," Dolly answered him; "but somehow it makes me feel weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall get accustomed to it."
CHAPTER IV.
GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.
IN the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more had been domesticated in the cottage which Arthur had given her, there was no one to receive the strangers except the cook and the house-maid, and as Mrs. Tracy entered the hall the two came forward, bristling with criticism, and ready to resent anything like interference in the new-comers.
The servants at the park had not been pleased with the change of administration. That Mr. Arthur was a gentleman whom it was an honor to serve, they all conceded; but with regard to the new master and mistress, they had grave doubts. Although none of them had been at the park on the occasion of Mrs. Tracy's first visit there, many rumors concerning her had reached them, and she would scarcely have recognized herself could she have heard the remarks of which she was the subject. That she had worked in a factory—which was true—was her least offense, for it was whispered that once, when the winter was unusually severe, and work scarce, she had gone to a soup-house, and even asked and procured coal from the poor-master for herself and her mother.
This was not true, and would have argued nothing against her as a woman if it had been, but the cook and the house-maid believed it, and passed sundry jokes together while preparing to meet "the pauper," as they designated her.
In this state of things their welcome could not be very cordial, but Mrs. Tracy was too tired and too much excited to observe their demeanor particularly. They were civil, and the house was in perfect order, and so much larger and handsomer than she had thought it to be, that she felt bewildered and embarrassed, and said "Yes 'em," and "No, ma'am," to Martha, and told Sarah, who was waiting at dinner, that she "might as well sit down in a chair as to stand all the time; she presumed she was tired with so many extra steps to take."
But Sarah knew her business, and persisted in standing, and inflicting upon the poor woman as much ceremony as possible, and then, in the kitchen, she repeated to the cook and the coachman, with sundry embellishments of her own, the particulars of the dinner, amid peals of laughter at the expense of the would-be lady.
It was hardly possible that mistress and maids would stay together long, especially as Mrs. Tracy, when a little more assured, and a little less in awe of her servants, began to show a disposition to know by personal observation what was going on in the kitchen, and to hint broadly that there was too much waste here and expenditure there, and quite too much company at all hours of the day.
"She didn't propose to keep a boarding-house," she said, "or to support families outside, and the old woman who came so often to the basement door with a big basket under her cloak must discontinue her calls."
Then there occurred one of those Hibernian cyclones, which sweep everything before them, and which in this instance swept Mrs. Tracy out of the kitchen for the time being, and the cook out of the house. Her self-respect, she said, would not allow her to stay with a woman who knew just how much coal was burned, how much butter was used, and how much bread was thrown away, and who objected to giving a bite now and then to a poor old woman, who, poor as she was, had never yet been helped by the poor-master, or gone to a soup-house, like my lady!
Martha's