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Watling in Washington. By no means the least among our callers was the Hon. Fitch Truesdale, editor of the St. Helen's Messenger, whose editorials were of the trite effectiveness that is taken widely for wisdom, and were assiduously copied every week by other state papers and labeled "Mr. Truesdale's Common Sense."
And now every box and trunk was ready. Farmer Truesdale's red wagon stood at the door, waiting to convey them to the depot, and nothing remained for Grandma Nichols, but to bid adieu to the old spot, endeared to her by so many associations.
Meanwhile the odor of Truesdale's offence permeated the house as completely as the office. Rosy wondered what could be under way as she saw her mother and Jane seated on unaccustomed chairs in unaccustomed attitdues at unaccustomed times in unaccustomed rooms while they engaged in brief and infrequent interchanges of words, or co-operated for the production of long and eloquent silences.
Yet Eliza Marshall abhorred speculation with all the dread of the middle-aged female conservative. One dollar through legitimate trade rather than ten through such paths as Roger had of late been so fearfully treading. Mrs. Belden had heard something of Truesdale's intended departure for the Orient. "He finds Chicago uncongenial, no doubt." "Truesdale is at home everywhere.
He had also prosecuted various inquiries of his own in various directions, and these inquiries had resulted in his coming to look up Truesdale's frothy suggestion with more seriousness, and upon Truesdale himself with more consideration, if not with more respect that he still withheld. "He isn't a complete fool, after all," admitted Roger. "I never thought he was," responded his father, dully.
He saw that he had allowed his view of the matter to be wrongly colored by the impressions of his father and the representations of Belden; and Truesdale's comments lacerated his self-esteem as with griffins' claws. "Haven't I told you that they have taken legal advice, and that "
Statira Belden's eyes sought the floor. It was she who had made it sure that knowledge of Truesdale's transgression should reach the ears of Susan Bates; yet her own son had just established relations with a "baroness" who still lingered behind on the scene of the late national festivities, and at the climax of an insane extravagance had been openly cast off by his family.
The decorum of the walk could not exclude all of Truesdale's lithe and swaying ease; he held his head high, and sent his eyes abroad to right or left with an assurance that some might have felt to be an impertinence and others an insolence. To Jane he seemed just descended from some heaven-kissing hill. She sniffed once or twice as he went past. "I hope I didn't put too much on I'm sure I didn't.
We go very simply we wear sackcloth and ashes. As for the portrait that can wait a day or two." Then she told Bertie very solemnly that they were to begin a study of the philanthropies of a great city. But Bertie took her own view of the expedition; Truesdale's participation made it seem rather like an excursion into fairy-land.
A finer vision might have seen in Truesdale's prank a good-natured, half-contemptuous indifference alike to place and people. "I don't know what the Warners over the way will think," she emitted, as if that were all. She presently relented as to the new inmate of her household. "Come, Bertie!" she called; "step up, like a good girl.
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