Mifflin

“ Mifflin a kindred spirit.
Mrs. Mifflin would have said this for herself, with her characteristic definiteness of speech, had she not been out of touch with her publishers and foolscap paper. She and the Professor are on their Parnassus, somewhere on the high roads, happily engrossed in the most godly diversion known to man—selling books. And I venture to think that there are no volumes they take more pleasure in recommending than the wholesome and invigorating books which bear your name. ”

“ It was a very splendid room to Mary Rose but there was something about it that made her frown as she stood in the doorway.
"It needs something. Even the chairs don't look as if they really knew each other. It doesn't feel as if people ever had a good time in it." She shook her head and thought of the shabby sitting-room in Mifflin—not big enough to swing a cat in, daddy had said—where she and daddy and Jenny Lind and George Washington and Solomon and Lena had been crowded together. ”

“ Mary Rose was too interested in watching Miss Thorley's wonderful fingers and Miss Thorley was too intent on her work for conversation. At last Mary Rose could keep still no longer.
"Are you really an enchanted princess?" she asked eagerly.
"I should scarcely call myself that, Mary Rose. A working woman is the way I say it."
"Then what did Mr. Jerry mean? Don't you think he is an awfully nice man? He makes me think of Alvin Lewis in Mifflin, only Alvin isn't quite so stylish. He is a clerk in the drug store in Mifflin and he was real pleasant. ”

“ Don't you wonder how God ever folded it up in such a small package? Mr. Jerry's Aunt Mary was going to throw it away. She said it was too late, that it ought to have been planted months ago, but I said wouldn't she please give it a chance. My daddy used to say that was all people needed, just a chance. Mrs. Mullins had one in Mifflin, I mean a lily, and it didn't need hardly any sun. It just grew and grew. You can sit beside it in the window and pretend you're a Japanese queen. Don't you think it's fun to pretend? And imagine? It's almost the same as having everything you want. ”

“ Mary Rose knew. "I never heard of a home without children. There wasn't one in all Mifflin." She tried to imagine such a thing but she couldn't do it. "It wouldn't be a home," she decided emphatically.
Mrs. Schuneman regarded her curiously before she gave herself another surprise. "Suppose you go and ask your aunt if you can go out with me and find a bird? I believe you would choose a good one. Louise and Lottie can make a fuss if they want to but I never said a word when they bought a phonograph and a bird will be more company for an old lady than a machine." ”

“ In Mifflin all the girls as big as Miss Thorley meant to be married.
"It means exactly that." Miss Thorley's pretty lips were pressed closer together. "Work, Mary Rose, is the most important thing in life."
But Mary Rose was horrified. "Aren't you ever going to make a home for a family?" she cried. She couldn't believe that was what Miss Thorley meant and she dropped a jam jar. "You don't have to stop work to do it," she cried eagerly and helpfully after she had retrieved the jar. "Mrs. Evans, she's Gladys' mother, says she'd think the millennium was here if she didn't have any work to do. ”

“ It's because there isn't anything alive in it. There isn't even a Lady Washington geranium." She was astonished that there wasn't, for in Mifflin pots of geraniums and other plants were always to be seen in sunny windows. "It gives you a hollow feeling—not empty for bread and butter but for people," she decided.
Mary Rose had never lived where there were no live things. "Dogs and cats and birds help to make you feel friendly toward all the world. And so do plants. I guess that's true of all the things God made," she thought as she hung up the dish pan on the nail Aunt Kate had pointed out. ”

“ We only had strawberry and raspberry and plum and grape and apple butter in Mifflin. I used to stir the apple butter for Lena. You have to stir it all the time or it burns. It makes your arm awful tired but it's good for the muscle. Feel mine!" She clenched her small arm and held it out so that Mr. Bracken could feel her muscles.
He murmured: "I'll be darned!" in a dazed sort of a way as he felt her muscle, and Mary Rose went on sociably.
"And there's Mrs. Bracken. She said I washed her dishes better than a full-sized girl. And now there's you. Have you had any lunch?" ”

“ Men were so constant. Her nose tilted. She felt so much more scorn than a curled lip could express that her nose had to tilt. But until she could save a lot of money and go to New York she would stay right there in the Washington and listen to Mary Rose's experiences at the Lincoln School.
"It isn't like the school at Mifflin one bit, but I like it just the same. And I've made a lot of new friends. I never realized how you needed friends your own age until today. ”

“ Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most beautiful name in the entire dictionary, but Gladys Evans in Mifflin said it was common. She counted up and she knew seven Marys, with her grandmother and old Mrs. Wilcox, who's deaf and half blind, and four Roses. But there wasn't one Mary Rose!" triumphantly. "And that made all the difference in the world. ”

“ A lease is the same as a law."
"Won't have any cats or dogs or children!" Mary Rose's voice was shrill with astonishment and her eyes were as big as saucers. "Why, everybody has children! They always have had. Don't you remember, even Adam and Eve? In Mifflin everyone has children."
"It's different in Waloo. You see the man who owns this house thinks childern are noisy an' destructive." She tried her best to find an excuse for the unknown owner. "He doesn't know, of course. He's probably a cross old bachelor." ”

“ He even put out his tanned hand and patted Mary Rose's arm. "No, Mary Rose," he said slowly. "I guess you're right. You're always looking for friends and so you'll find them. You keep on being a silly simp and thinking of Mifflin as the new Jerusalem and perhaps it'll grow into one."
"It would if everyone thought it would," Mary Rose insisted and the troubled look slipped away from her face. "If people feel friendly they'll find friends."
"And she believes it," Jimmie told Mr. Jerry when they were cleaning the car together that evening. "Gosh, aren't girl kids queer! ”

“ Ella was fourteen an' her clothes 'll just fit Mary Rose or I miss my guess. They'll make her look every minute of fourteen. An' a girl of fourteen isn't a child. Why, the state that's again' child labor lets a girl of fourteen go to work if she can get a permit, so we've got the law on our side. You see how easy it is, Larry?" She beamed with pride at the solution she had found for the problem that had tormented her ever since the letter had come from Mifflin.
"Do you mean you're goin' to tell lies about your own niece?" demanded Larry incredulously.
Mrs. Donovan looked at him sadly. ”

“ Why, you're almost entirely surrounded by neighbors," she cried, as if Miss Adams could not be almost entirely surrounded by anything more desirable. "There are almost as many people in this house as there are in the Presbyterian Church in Mifflin and no one was ever lonely there except on week days. Don't you like your neighbors?"
"I don't know them," confessed Miss Adams, mournfully.
"You don't know the people who live right next door to you!" Mary Rose had never heard of such a situation. "Why, when the Jenkses moved from Prairieville Mrs. ”

“ The curious eyes which watched Miss Miflin and the children on the train were multiplied tenfold when they found themselves on the streets of the county seat. Miss Miflin was pretty enough to attract attention anywhere, but she had never before been so frankly stared at. She was well aware that the children in their striped shawls and little sunbonnets and gray home-knit stockings looked strange in a town where for twenty years little girls had been wearing coats and hats. ”

“ Whacker met you and told us. ‘Don,’ you will observe, has a decidedly Spanish air; but what nationality did ‘Miff’ indicate?”
“Don Miff, Don Miff,” repeated he, smiling. “Well, that has a decidedly droll sound when seriously spoken as a man’s name. And Mr. Whacker told you that it was, being interpreted, plain John Smith.”
“Yes; and, by the way, it occurs to me that perhaps you would like to know who I am. I am Mrs. Carter” (the Don tried to bow) , “and that gentleman seated by the window, who has nursed you so faithfully” (Charley arose) , “is Mr. Charles Frobisher, of Leicester County.” ”

“ An unconquerable reserve was her most marked trait. But at last even she rose (not being able, perhaps, to see the Don from where she sat) , but did not join the cluster that surrounded the piano. She stood apart, resting her elbow upon the mantel-piece, her cheek upon her hand, listening to the music,—the music half drowned by the fevered tattoo her own heart was beating. For now Lucy was singing the last stanza of the song, and the Herr had dropped into something like an accompaniment, while the Don, seeing that his antagonist had called a truce, had reined his own muse down into a “second.” ”

“ Charley pulling away with close, business-like attention to his notes; the Herr calm but smiling good-humoredly, when, from time to time, he stumbled through rapid passages where his reading was better than his execution; Mr. Whacker struggling manfully, with flushed cheeks and eager eyes, and beating time with his feet with rather unprofessional vigor. As for Lucy, relieved of her embarrassment, when fire had opened all along the line, she made the Herr proud of his pupil; while the Don, master of his score and his instrument, kept nodding and smiling as he played ”

“ At any rate, be there or be there not John Smiths in the world, that is not his name.”
“With his starry eyes!” put in Alice, languishingly.
“With his starry eyes!” repeated Mary, smiling. “No; say what he will, John Smith is no more his name than Don Miff was. And as I, somehow, like the oddity of the latter, Don Miff shall he be with me till the end of the chapter.”
“Selah!” said Alice.
CHAPTER X.
The most dangerous gift that a man can possess is superior skill in perilous employments. ”

“ He concluded with declaring to Mr Allworthy, that he should have long since informed him of this matter, had not Mr Blifil, by the most earnest interpositions, prevented him. "He is," says he, "an excellent youth: though such forgiveness of enemies is carrying the matter too far."
In reality, Blifil had taken some pains to prevail with the parson, and to prevent the discovery at that time; for which he had many reasons. He knew that the minds of men are apt to be softened and relaxed from their usual severity by sickness. ”

“ How dreadfully serious he looks! Mind, girls, no frivolity! I’ll be bound he says ‘Sabbath.’”
“No gentleman ever speaks of Sunday as ‘the Sabbath,’” said Mary, reproachfully.
“Very true; and he is a gentleman if he is a pass’n. Hang this glove! Mr. Whacker,” she continued, “here we are; and all ready, for a wonder, in time.”
Wheels were crunching along up to the steps; horses, held by boys, were pawing the earth; and on the piazza there was the rustle of dresses and the subdued hum of preparation. The Don alone seemed to have no part in the proceedings. Alice drew two girls’ heads together. ”

“ And the cutter of capers and of didoes passed her hand across her eyes. “Look,” said she after a pause, “there she sits now, and beside the Don, too. Don’t she look serene? See how she is smiling at me over the banister!” And throwing herself into an attitude, she blew kiss after kiss to Her Serenity, in rapid succession, from alternate hands. “There! she is off. As her eyes are shut tight, she will not be able to see me for half a minute, and I will take the opportunity of telling you, for your comfort, that she does not think there is a man living half good enough for me. How do you feel?” ”

“ The Don had expressed no surprise when I named Mary Rolfe; probably, then, it was the mention of Lucy that had amazed the S. T. It flashed across my female mind, in the tenth part of a second, how singularly Mr. Frobisher had acted, after the first flush of astonishment was over,—how he pursed up his brow, gazed far away, in fact, mooned around in the most absurd fashion, instead of telling me all about it at once. Would the Don, too, laugh, when I mentioned Lucy’s name?
“‘We do you that honor, at any rate,’ said I.
“‘We? Who are we? ”

“ Whacker raised his eyes to the ceiling—“who have softer things to say than any our instruments can produce” (Jones and his girl looked unconscious) , “let them remain and say them. Here is the parlor, there is the dining room; arrange yourselves as you would. And now, Mrs. Poythress, will you take my arm and lead the way?”
Jones and Jones’s girl were the first to move, and we were soon on our way across the lawn; while dark cohorts brought up the rear and covered the flanks of the merry column.
“To me!” said Mary, when the Don had offered her his arm. “I feel much honored.” ”

“ A man talking with another may look him in the face for an hour without knowing one of his thoughts; a woman will flash a careless glance across your face,—across it—no more,—and read you to the heart.
Alice and Mary beamed upon each other and ejaculated, “Lucy!” But Mary’s eyes had had time to sweep the features of the Don. “Won’t it be charming to have Lucy with us!” said she; but she hardly knew what she said. Her face, turned towards Alice, wore a mechanical smile; but she saw only the Don and the startled, almost dazed look that came over his face on hearing Mr. Whacker’s words. ”