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"Good-morning." And she removed Guy and herself into her house, while Mrs. Mattern and Arvasita, stiffly ignoring me, passed into their own door. "Come have a drink," said Stuart to me. "I am glad you said it. Old Mother Mattern will let down those prodigy skirts. The poor girl has been ashamed of them these two years, but momma has bulldozed her into staying young for stage effect.
"That is Leola again," said Mrs. Mattern, showing me another newspaper cut hair, stockings, and a candle this time. "Sleep-walking scene, 'Macbeth," said Arvasita. "Leola's great night at the church fair and bazar, El Paso, in Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpiece.
Mrs. Jeffries and Mrs. Mattern had a way of being in the hotel office at hours when I passed through to meals. They never came together, and always were taken by surprise at meeting me. "Leola is ever so grateful to you," Mrs. Mattern would say. "Oh," I would answer, "do not speak of it. Have you ever heard Guy's 'Blue-Jay' story?"
It's jammed behind your tank." "Oh, indeed!" A window in the next house was opened, a head put out, and this occasioned my presentation to both ladies. They were Mrs. Mattern and Mrs. Jeffries, and they fell instantly into a stiff caution of deportment; but they speedily found I was not worth being cautious over.
Stuart whispered to me that they were widows of high standing, and mothers of competing favorites for the elocution prize; and I hastened to court their esteem. Mrs. Mattern was in body more ample, standing high and yellow and fluffy; but Mrs. Jeffries was smooth and small, and behind her spectacles she had an eye. "You must not let us interrupt you, ladies," said I, after some civilities.
"You'll not resign?" said Stuart to me. "It is 'yours till death, ain't it?" I told him that it was. "About once a month I can expect this," said Mrs. Jeffries, returning along her frontier. "Well, it's not the only case in Sharon, Mrs. Jeffries," said Mrs. Mattern. "I'll remind you of them three coops when you kept poultry, and they got away across the railroad, along with the barber's shop."
"Reuben Gadsden is likely to mortify us. He is an earnest boy, but nervous; and one or two others. But I have limited their length. Reuben Gadsden's father declined to have his boy cut short, and he will give us a speech of Burke's; but I hope for the best. It narrows down, it narrows down. Guy Jeffries and Leola Mattern are the two." "The parents seem to take keen interest," said I. Mr.
"Perhaps you know, or perhaps you do not know, how high up that is reckoned." "Why, mother, Leola can speak all around me. She can," Guy added to me, nodding his head confidentially. I did not believe him, I think because I preferred his name to that of Leola. "Leola will study in Paris, France," announced Mrs. Mattern, arriving with her child. "She has no advantages here.
And if Leola had made 'em cry good and hard that night, the committee's decision would have kicked up more of a fuss than it did. As it was, Mrs. Mattern got me alone; but I worked us around to where Mrs. Jeffries was having her ice-cream, and I left them to argue it out."
"The next is the Los Angeles Christian Home. And here's what they wrote about her in El Paso: 'Her histrionic genius for one so young' it commences below that picture. That's Leola." I now recognized the black stockings and the hair. "Here's what a literary lady in Lordsburg thinks," pursued Mrs. Mattern. "Never mind that," murmured Leola. "I shall." And the mother read the letter to me.
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