Miss Carver made tea, and served it in some pretty
cups which Lemuel hoped Statira might admire, but
she took it without noticing, and in talking with
Miss Carver she drawled, and said “N-y-e-e-e-s,”
and “I don’t know as I d-o-o-o,”
and “Well, I should think as mu-u-ch,”
with a prolongation of all the final syllables in her
sentences which he had not observed in her before,
and which she must have borrowed for the occasion
for the gentility of the effect. She tried to
refer everything to him, and she and ’Manda Grier
talked together as much as they could, and when the
others spoke of him as Mr. Barker, they called him
Lem. They did not look at anything, or do anything
to betray that they found the studio, on which Lemuel
had once expatiated to them, different from other
rooms.
At last Miss Swan abruptly brought out the studies
of Lemuel’s head, and put them in a good light;
’Manda Grier and Statira got into the wrong
place to see them.
’Manda blurted out, “Well, he looks ’s
if he’d had a fit of sickness in that
one;” and perhaps, in fact, Miss Carver had refined
too much upon a delicate ideal of Lemuel’s looks.
“So he d-o-o-es!” drawled Statira.
“And how funny he looks with that red thing
o-o-o-n!”
Miss Swan explained that she had thrown that in for
the colour, and that they had been fancying him in
the character of a young Roman.
“You think he’s got a Roman n-o-o-se?”
asked Statira through her own.
“I think Lem’s got a kind of a pug, m’self,”
said ’Manda Grier.
“Well, ’Manda Grier!” said Statira.
Lemuel could not look at Miss Carver, whom he knew
to be gazing at the two girls from the little distance
to which she had withdrawn; Miss Swan was biting her
lip.
“So that’s the celebrated St. Albans,
is it?” said ’Manda Grier, when they got
in the street. “Don’t know ’s
I really ever expected to see the inside ’f
it. You notice the kind of oilcloth they had on
that upper entry, S’tira?”
They did not mention Lemuel’s pictures, or the
artists; and he scarcely spoke on the way home.
When they parted, Statira broke out crying, and would
not let him kiss her.
“I’m afraid your little friend at the
St. Albans isn’t altogether happy of late,”
said Evans toward the end of what he called one of
his powwows with Sewell. Their talk had taken
a vaster range than usual, and they both felt the
need, that people know in dealing with abstractions,
of finally getting the ground beneath their feet again.
“Ah?” asked Sewell, with a twinge that
allayed his satisfaction in this. “What’s
the matter with him?”
“Oh, the knowledge of good and evil, I suspect.”
“I hope there’s nothing wrong,”
said Sewell anxiously.
“Oh no. I used the phrase because it came
easily. Just what I mean is that I’m afraid
his view of our social inequalities is widening and
deepening, and that he experiences the dissatisfaction
of people who don’t command that prospect from
the summit. I told you of his censure of our
aristocratic constitution?”
