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The action was sufficiently expressive and Gay was satisfied. Three days went by. Her Grace of Queensberry's maid, a hard-faced Scotswoman who was not to be intimidated nor betrayed into confidences, superintended Lavinia's shopping and turned a deaf ear to Mrs. Fenton's scoffs and innuendoes. The girl was transformed.
"Well now, let me take in the clothes an' we'll have a dish o' tea an' a bite and then you shall sing your song." "Yes, and I'll help you with the clothes." Lavinia's offer pleased Betty, and the two were soon busy pulling the various garments and bits of drapery from the lines and gathering from the grass others that had been set to bleach in the wind and sun. This done they entered the cottage.
There was another tiny mouse in the doll house under the parlour sofa, and a third one under Lavinia's bed, with a poor, frightened gray tail sticking out. They all got away safe. Papa would not allow mamma to go for the cat. He said: "Why can't a poor little mouse have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as we?" A long story about a family of hardy New England pioneers in Revolutionary days.
The only light in Miss Lavinia's den, other than the fire, was a low lamp, with a soft-hued amber shade, so that the room seemed to draw close about one like protecting arms, country fashion, instead of seeking to turn one out, which is the feeling that so many of the stately apartments in the great city houses give me.
There were oil paintings on the walls, paintings which foreign dealers, recognizing Aunt Lavinia's art craving as a gift of Providence to them had sold her at high prices. They were, for the most part, landscapes, inclining strongly to snow-covered mountains, babbling brooks, and cows; or marines in which one-third of vivid sunset illumined two-thirds of placid sea.
"Lavinia Sanviano!" she spoke aloud, with the extraordinary sensation of addressing, in her reflection, a stranger. She could never, never wear her hair down again, she thought with an odd pang. Gheta invariably took breakfast in her room. It was a larger chamber by far than Lavinia's, toward the Via Garibaldi.
Anna was smoking, but Gheta had refused. Lavinia's feeling for her sister had changed from pity to total indifference. The elder had been an overbearing and thoughtless superior; and now, when Lavinia felt in some subtle inexplicable manner that Gheta was losing rank, her store of sympathy was small. Lavinia hoped that she would marry Orsi immediately and leave the field free for herself.
So Arthur's mother tells me; she talked about 'branches' younger branches, elder branches, inferior branches as if it were a royal house. Arthur, it appears, is of the reigning line, but poor Lavinia's young man is not. Beyond this, Arthur's mother knows very little about him; she has only a vague story that he has been 'wild. But I know his sister a little, and she is a very nice woman.
Comedy, however, had more latitude than tragedy, and as comedy was Lavinia's line her winsome face and pleasing smile and her melodious voice were always welcome, and when she had a "singing" part she brought down the house. Of course the life was hard especially when the share of the receipts which fell to the minor members was small but it was full of variety and sometimes of excitement.
This seemed to Catherine indeed beautiful news; it had a fine prosperous air. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said; and now, for a moment, she was disposed to throw herself on Aunt Lavinia's neck. "It's much better than being under some one; and he has never been used to that," Mrs. Penniman went on. "He is just as good as his partner they are perfectly equal! You see how right he was to wait.
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