"So you're come!" was her greeting as Georgie appeared. "I thought you'd be here sooner; but I suppose you've had a good deal to do. I should have offered to help if the day had not been so cold. Come in and take your things off."
Georgie glanced about her as she smoothed her hair. The room bore the unmistakable marks of spinsterhood and decayed gentility. It was crammed with little belongings, some valuable, some perfectly valueless. Two or three pieces of spindle-legged and claw-footed mahogany made an odd contrast to the common painted bedroom set. Miniatures by Malbone and lovely pale-lined mezzotints and line engravings hung on the walls amid a maze of photographs and Japanese fans and Christmas cards and chromos; an indescribable confusion of duds encumbered every shelf and table; and in the midst sat Miss Vi's tall, meager, dissatisfied self, with thin hair laboriously trained after the prevailing fashion, and a dress whose antique material seemed oddly unsuited to its modern cut and loopings. Somehow the pitifulness of the scene struck Georgie afresh.
"Shall I ever be like this?" she reflected.
"Now tell me what has happened since the funeral," said her cousin. "I had neuralgia all last week and week before, or I should have got down oftener. Who has called? Have the Hanburys been to see you?"
"Ellen came last week, but I was out," replied Georgie.
"What a pity! And how did it happen that you were out? You ought not to have been seen in the street so soon, I think. It's not customary."
"How could I help it?" responded Georgie, sadly. "I had all the move to arrange for. Mr. Custer wanted the house for Saturday. There was no one to go for me."
"I suppose you couldn't; but it's a pity. It's never well to outrage conventionalities. Have Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Constant Carrington called?"
"Mrs. Carrington hasn't, but she wrote me a little note. And dear Mrs. St. John came twice, and brought flowers, and was ever so kind. She always has been so very nice to me, you know."
"Naturally! The St. Johns were nobodies till Mr. St. John made all that money in railroads. She is glad enough to be on good terms with the old families, of course."
"I don't think it's that," said Georgie, rather wearily. "I think she's nice because she's naturally so kind-hearted, and she likes me."
The tea-bell put an end to the discussion. Miss Sally's welcome was a good deal warmer than Cousin Vi's had been.
"You poor dear child," she exclaimed, "you look quite tired out! Here, take this seat by the fire, Georgie, and I'll pour your tea out first of all. She needs it, don't she?" to Cousin Vi.
"Miss Talcott is rather tired, I dare say," said that lady, icily. Cousin Vi had lived for sixteen years in daily intercourse with Miss Sally, one of the sunniest and most friendly of women, and had never once relaxed into cordiality in all that time. Her code of manners included no approximation toward familiarity between a Talcott and a letter of lodgings.
Georgie took a different view. "Thank you so much, dear Miss Sally," she said. "How good you are! I am tired."
"I wish you wouldn't call Miss Sally 'dear,'" her cousin remarked after they had gone upstairs. "That sort of thing is most disagreeable to me. You have to be on your guard continually in a house like this, or you get mixed up with all sorts of people."
Georgie let it pass. She was too tired to argue.
"Now, let us talk about your plans," Miss Talcott said next morning. "Have you made any yet?"
"N – o; only that I must find some work to do at once."
"Don't speak like that to any one but me," her cousin said sharply. "There are lady-like occupations, of course, in which you can – can – mingle; but they need not be mentioned, or made known to people in general."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. I've never had occasion to look into the matter, but I suppose a girl situated as you are could find something, – embroidery, for instance. You could do that for the Decorative Art. They give you a number, and nobody knows your real name."
"I thought of embroidery," said Georgie; "but I never was very good at it, and so many are doing it nowadays. Besides, it seems to me that people are getting rather tired of all but the finer sort of work."
"What became of that nephew of Mr. Constant Carrington whom you used to see so much of two or three years ago?" demanded Miss Vi, irrelevantly.
"Bob Curtis? I don't quite know where he is. His father failed, don't you remember, and lost all his money, and Bob had to leave Harvard and go into some sort of business?"
"Oh, did he? He's of no consequence, then. I don't know what made me think of him. Well, you could read to an invalid, perhaps, or go to Europe with some lady who wanted a companion."
"Or be second-best wing-maker to an angel," put in Georgie, with a little glint of humor. "Cousin Vi, all that would be very pleasant, but I don't think it is likely to happen. I'm dreadfully afraid no one wants me to go to Europe; and I must have something to do at once, you know. I must earn my bread."
"Don't use such a phrase. It sounds too coarse for anything."
"I don't think so, Cousin Vi. I don't mind working a bit, if only I can hit on something that somebody wants, and that I can do well."
"This is exactly what I have been afraid of," said Miss Vi, despairingly. "I've always had a fear that old Jacob Talcott would break out in you sooner or later. He has skipped two generations, but he was bound to show himself some day or other. He had exactly that common sort of way of looking at things and talking about them, – the only Talcott I ever knew of that did! Don't you recollect how he insisted on putting his son into business, and the boy ran away and went to the West Indies and married some sort of Creole, – all his father's fault?
"Now, I'll tell you," she went on after a pause. "I've been thinking over this matter, and have made up my mind about it. You're not to do anything foolish, Georgie. If you do, you'll be sorry for it all your life, and I shall never forgive you besides. Such a good start as you have made in society, and all; it will be quite too much if you go and spoil your chances with those ridiculous notions of yours. Now, listen. If you'll give up all idea of supporting yourself, unless it is by doing embroidery or something like that, which no one need know about, I'll – I'll – well – I'll agree to pay your board here at Miss Sally's, and give you half this room for a year. As likely as not you'll be married by the end of that time, or if not, something else will have turned up! Any way, I'll do it for one year. When the year is over, we can talk about the next." And Miss Talcott folded her hands with the manner of one who has offered an ultimatum.
If rather a grudging, this was a really generous offer, as Georgie well knew. To add the expense of her young cousin's board to her own would cost Miss Vi no end of self-denials, pinchings here and pinchings there, the daily frets and calculations that weigh so heavily. Miss Talcott's slender income at its best barely sufficed for the narrow lodgings, to fight off the shabbiness which would endanger her place in "society," and to pay for an occasional cab and theatre ticket. Not to do, or at least to seem to be doing and enjoying, what other people did, was real suffering to Cousin Vi. Yet she was deliberately invoking it by her proposal.
Had it been really made for her sake, had it been quite disinterested, Georgie would have been deeply touched and grateful; as it was, she was sufficiently so to thank her cousin warmly, but without committing herself to acceptance. She must think it over, she said.
She did think it over till her mind fairly ached with the pressure of thought, as the body does after too much exercise. She walked past the Woman's Exchange and studied the articles in the windows. There were the same towels and tidies that had been there two months before, or what seemed the same. Georgie recollected similar articles worked by people whom she knew about, for which she had been asked to buy raffle tickets. "She can't get any one to buy it," had been said. Depending on such work for a support seemed a bare outlook. She walked away with a little shake of her head.
"No," she thought; "embroidery wouldn't pay unless I had a 'gift'; and I don't