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Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked. Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now.
They came in sight of the Smalley front gate and Jed came out of his walking trance to hear her say: "Anyway, we like it all but the sal'ratus biscuits and the coffee and THEY are dreadful. Mamma thinks it's made of chickenry the coffee, I mean." At the gate Jed's "queerness," or shyness, came upon him. The idea of meeting Mrs. Armstrong or even the members of the Smalley family he shrank from.
She eyed herself in the mirror anxiously, then looked down at Miss Smalley's nut-cracker face that was peering up at her, its lips pursed grotesquely over the pins. "Of course it is," mumbled Miss Smalley. "Everybody's clothes are too young for 'em nowadays.
Where do you s'pose it's got to?" "See there!" said Bel, pointing across the square to the great, dark, public building. High up, in one of the windows, a gas-light glimmered. Two men were visible in the otherwise deserted place. They were putting up a step-ladder. "Do you suppose they are there nights, other nights?" Bel asked Miss Smalley. "No. They're after books and things.
Poor old Miss Smalley, when she came home and took off her hood before her little glass, and saw how pale she was with her night's watching and excitement, and how the thin gray hairs had straggled over her forehead, came back with a pang into the flesh, and was afraid she had been ridiculous; but lying tired upon her bed, in the long after hours of the day, she forgot once more what manner of outside woman she was, and remembered only, with a pervading peace, how the watchmaker had spoken.
These women, with no man belonging to them to come and give them news, restrained by force of habit from what would have been at another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter exceptionality of this time, while down among the hissing engines and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the spectacle, while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington Street, whose windows flashed like jewels in the far-shining flames, where the wonderful bronze Washington sat majestic and still against that sky of stormy fire as he sits in every change and beautiful surprise of whatever sky of cloud or color may stretch about him, on Commonwealth Avenue, where splendid mansions stood with doors wide open, and drays unloading merchandise saved from the falling warehouses into their freely offered shelter, ladies were walking to and fro, as if in their own halls and parlors, watching, and questioning whomsoever came, and saying to each other hushed and solemn or excited words, when the whole city was but one great home upon which had fallen a mighty agony and wonder that drove its hearts to each other as the hearts of a household, these two, Bel Bree and little Miss Smalley, knew scarcely anything that was definite, and had been waiting and wondering all night, thinking it would be improper to talk into the street!
When the proclamation was repeated to Captain Cy he smiled. "Alpheus," he said to Mr. Smalley, his informant, "you didn't use to know Deacon Zeb Clark, who lived up by the salt works in my granddad's time, hey? No, course you didn't! Well, the deacon was a great believer in his own judgment. One time, it bein' Saturday, his wife wanted him to pump the washtub full and take a bath.
While waiting for the dinner to come on, he took me apart and asked confidentially what we had really done. I told him, and he asked if we cabled, to which I replied that as to that I knew nothing, that I had wired G.W. Smalley in London, but what he had done I could not say.
It was the smells in that rotten place. They'd turn a pig's stomach." "I wish you'd see a doctor." She looked at him with suspicious eyes. "If you run Smalley in on me I'll leave home." "Will you go to bed?" "I'll go to bed, all right." He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's being called out by the union.
Quite indefensible, I admit an act of tyranny, and nothing less. Like other tyrants, I carried my point. Mr. Smalley chose his alternative, without a moment's hesitation. He smiled resignedly, and gave up the name of his client: Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. That was enough for me I wanted to know no more.
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