Miss Sallie

“ Sallie has flirted joyously through life thus far, and has appeared to have about as little heart as any girl I ever knew. Sallie is the sauce piquante in one’s life—absolutely necessary at times to make things taste at all, but a little of her goes a long way. ”

“ Hand in a lordly manner, putting a thin silver boat, filled with salt, and a cheap pink glass pepper-shaker side by side on the tray. Sallie brushed Hand away in disgust.
"That doesn't go with the best silver salt-cellar; that's the kitchen pepper. And, you can say Miss Sallie, if you please."
"No, just Sallie, if you please! I've taken a great fancy to you, Sallie, and I don't like to be so formal," argued Hand. "Besides, I like your name; and I'll carry the tray to the top of the stairs for you, if you'll be good."
"I wouldn't trouble you for the world, Mr. Hand," she tossed back. ”

“ There were plenty of presents, too: and when it was all over, and they were in the carriage, to be sent to the station, Mr. Ercildoune, holding Sallie's hand in farewell, left there a bit of paper, "which is for you," he said. "God protect, and keep you happy, my child!" Then they were gone, with many kind adieus and good wishes called and sent after them. When they were seated in the cars, Sallie looked at her bit of paper, and read on its outer covering, "A wedding-gift to Sallie Howard from my dear daughter Francesca," and found within the deed of a beautiful little home. God bless her! ”

“ I will not trouble you further," and she moved away like an outraged Mrs. Siddons.
"I—I'm awfully sorry, Miss Crosstrees. I didn't know——of course——if you can get down. I will most certainly——" He collapsed into confused silence.
"You will take us then?" Sallie questioned, approaching two steps nearer to him.
"Certainly: but er—er—can you—er?"
Sallie looked down. A perpendicular iron ladder led down to the pinnace some thirty feet below. It was not pleasant for a woman.
"Will you go down and—and——" faltered Sallie. He was a nice youth, who understood and disappeared, I after him. ”

“ MAX AND THE ASAFETIDA SPOON
I do wish the great man who is discovering how to put people into some sort of metaphysical pickle that will suspend their animations until he gets ready to wake them up, would hurry up with his investigations, so he can catch Sallie before she begins to fade or wilt. Sallie, just as she is, brought to life about five generations from now, would cause a sensation.
Some women are so feminine that they are sticky, unless well spiced with deviltry. Sallie's loveliness hasn't much seasoning. ”

“ For himself, he did not care, and Martha had simple tastes like his own. But there was Sallie. She was only a wee tot now but she would be a woman some day. They must give Sallie all the advantages they had missed; they must lay by money against the time when Sallie would be a grown up woman and want things like other girls of her age. ”

“ Eight cents is so mean when she does all his work and she is such a bright little thing too, not stupid like our Sallie. Sallie would never learn to do a thing if I didn't scold her all the time, but Sallie is a good girl, and I take care and she will do all right."
Sallie was a good, obedient german child. She never answered Anna back, no more did Peter, old Baby and little Rags and so though always Anna's voice was sharply raised in strong rebuke and worn expostulation, they were a happy family all there together in the kitchen. ”

“ I assure you, Daddy dear, I do appreciate that allowance.
Sallie is the most entertaining person in the world—and Julia Rutledge Pendleton the least so. It's queer what a mixture the registrar can make in the matter of room-mates. Sallie thinks everything is funny—even flunking—and Julia is bored at everything. She never makes the slightest effort to be amiable. She believes that if you are a Pendleton, that fact alone admits you to heaven without any further examination. Julia and I were born to be enemies. ”

“ Sallie looked up with eyes clouded and a tremor on her lips. “It’s nice of you to want to take me, but—”
“But I’ve been coming here every night this week trying to make a hit with you, and until to-night you never even knew I was alive. Don’t you think you ought to be a little kind to a fellow who’s as devoted as that?” ”

“ It was so cold, they really had to blow it, and they had to stop a great many times to laugh, and to wonder what the other people thought of them; at any rate, everybody would think they were "instraordinary" good girls to be allowed to come out all by themselves. [Pg 95]
"Only imagine," continued Sallie, "perhaps, after this, we shall be considit such excellent children—kind of oldey and serious, you know—that mamma will pack up our trunks, and let us go eleventeen times farther than this. ”

“ Only certain young men ever presumed to approach Sallie at all, and these were truly the darlings of fortune and fashion—young gentlemen of admitted ascendency, whose attentions would have made an obscure girl rapidly prominent, and who, while often distinguished for admirable manners, always contrived to hover near those who were the sovereign reverse of obscure. ”

“ I shall never like any one so much as Sallie—except you. I must always like you the best of all, because you're my whole family rolled into one. Leonora and I and two Sophomores have walked 'cross country every pleasant day and explored the whole neighborhood, dressed in short skirts and knit jackets and caps, and carrying shinny sticks to whack things with. ”

“ Eagerly she capered at Sallie’s heels up the back stairs. Above was a long hall with doors at either side, just the sort of hall that Jacqueline had expected to find in Aunt Eunice’s house. Sallie pushed open one of the doors, and led the way into a room that was all cool gray and leaf-green with here and there, in hangings and in wall-paper, a flash of canary yellow.
“This is the little girl’s room you was askin’ for,” said Sallie. “Don’t you touch nothin’ now. Here’s the bathroom, and t’other one is cross the hall.” ”

“ After the old people died, they say that Sallie had a chance to marry a promising young fellow and go out into the world, but to have withdrawn her interest in the land at that time would have hindered her two brothers, and after a controversy that no one understood, the lover went away. ”

“ And as for families! I never dreamed they could be so nice. Sallie has a father and mother and grandmother, and the sweetest three-year-old baby sister all over curls, and a medium-sized brother who always forgets to wipe his feet, and a big, good-looking brother named Jimmie, who is a junior at Princeton. ”

“ "What lady do you think prettiest?" said Sallie.
"Margaret."
"Which do you like best?" from Fred.
"Jo, of course."
"What silly questions you ask!" and Jo gave a disdainful shrug as the rest laughed at Laurie's matter-of-fact tone. ”

“ I am learning so many new things every day that when each Saturday night comes I look back on the Sallie of last Saturday night, amazed at her ignorance. ”

“ Dear Judy:
Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me—I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is this the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo. ”

“ This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.
I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton—and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes. ”

“ When I forget all else in my life, I shall still see Sally sitting motionless, like a painted figure, in the faint, reddish glow of the night-lamp, while above her, and above the little waxen face on her knee, the shadow, of the palm-leaf fan, waved by Aunt Euphronasia, flitted to and fro like the wing of a bat. ”

“ As for Miss Sally, her cup of happiness was almost full. She had "company" to her heart's content and of the very kind she loved—bright, merry, fun-loving girls who devoured her dainties with a frank zest that delighted her, filled the quaint old rooms with laughter and life, and chattered to her of all their plans and frolics and hopes. There was just one little cloud on Miss Sally's fair sky.
"If only Cousin Abner's girls would come!" she once said wistfully to Mary. "Nobody can quite take the place of one's own, you know. ”

“ Gentlemen were difficult enough, but they did every now and then cast themselves at one’s feet and make one feel one could do what one liked for a bit, but a lady wouldn’t; a lady would always stay a lady.
The word struck cold on Sally’s heart. What did one do with a lady? And a lady, too, who seemed hardly older than her son, and as wide-awake and sharp as you please, Sally was sure. She had been imagining Jocelyn’s mother old and stout and whitehaired, and perhaps not able to see or hear very well, and therefore comfortingly slow to mark what was done amiss. ”

“ The mere thought of Sally made him feel happier and more awake than he had felt for years. Better than the fortnight’s cure of silence and diet at Crippenham was one look at Sally, one minute spent with Sally. And she was so kind and intelligent, as well as so beautiful—listening to every word he said with the most obvious interest, and not once fidgeting or getting sleepy, as people nowadays seemed to have got into the habit of doing. It was like sitting in the sun to be with her; like sitting in the sun on a warm spring morning, and freshness everywhere, and flowers, and hope. ”

“ Sally was jolly enough, big-hearted and wholesome, but she lacked refinement. She could work like a steam engine all day, singing her way through great stacks of clothes to be washed, or big meals for hungry haymakers. She was a helpful, hearty, romping ranch girl, just the kind that Aunt ‘Liza liked. And she was also a great favorite with the fellows, with whom she would dance till morning, but whose ears she would box as quick as lightning if they grew too smart. She could joke with the whole crowd of them and hold her own, but the girl was as pure as she was frank and free. ”

“ Sally knows that this is expressed in him, and that he is bent on destruction, although her back is towards him. She feels his hot breath on her neck; she hears a hissing sound from remorseless lips; closer and closer he comes, and his arms are about to close around her, when she falls over a precipice, down, down, into the spreading branches of a tree, where she places her baby safely in a cradle of flowers, and watches the form of their enemy flash, like a glance of light, into the abyss, the yawning mouth of which closes upon him with a snap. ”

“ You may be less interested in books and more in human beings."
In the half darkness Sally smiled.
A lantern in one of the trees overhead swung and tilted so that the light shone down on her face.
Sally wore her rose-colored net and had a scarf of the same rose color about her shoulders. Tucked under her brown coil of hair in the fashion of the women who had danced in this old southern house and paraded its lawns a century ago, was a pink rose, a little crumpled now and faded. ”

“ Her best friend's earnestness made her flippant, and it was a curious fact that good old Sally, a predestinate spinster herself, settled on her moated grange of music teaching, always took a most militant part in other people's love affairs. In every lovers' quarrel in the village, in the rare divorces, she had stood fiercely, hot dabs of color on her cheekbones, for the swain or the husband. ”

“ There seemed to him to be no steady fellows in the crowd in his shop, except the ones who were already married, and they couldn’t really be steady or they wouldn’t be there. How could a married man be called steady who eagerly waited for Sally to sell him groceries he would only afterwards have to conceal from his wife? While as for the rest, they were a weedy lot of overworked and underpaid young clerks who couldn’t possibly afford to marry. Sally smiled at them all. She had none of the bridling, of the keep-off-the-grass-if-you-please, of her mother. ”

“ As Sally came in, laughing through her frowns, and displaying a row of dazzling white teeth, she was greeted with shouts and chorus of applause.
“Why, here’s Sally! What ho, Sally! Hurrah for pretty Sally!”
“I thought you’d grown deaf in that kitchen of yours,” muttered Jimmy Pitkin, as he passed the back of his hand across his very dry lips.
“All ri’! all ri’!” laughed Sally, as she deposited the freshly-filled tankards upon the tables, “why, what a ’urry, to be sure! And is your gran’mother a-dyin’ an’ you wantin’ to see the pore soul afore she’m gone! ”

“ Sally smiled a pitiful little smile. "Why, I don't know, mother. Is anything the matter?"
"Something must be. A girl like you doesn't get so low-spirited for nothing. It has been going on for nearly a year now. What is it, Sally? Can't you tell me, dear?"
"I wish I could, mother. I wish I knew. If I knew, I would tell you. I don't. I only know that nothing seems to be worth while and that I can't care about anything. A pity, isn't it?" And Sally smiled again.
"Sally, don't! If you smile like that again you will make me cry." ”

“ What would become of her mother, should Sally do such a thing? She could not be left to the Squire's wrath, nor could she go along with her daughter. It seemed the meshes of fate were drawing tighter and tighter around the girl. All avenues of escape appeared closed to her.
"To-day and to-night have been too trying for me!" cried Sally, wearily. "We both know what the past has been, we neither can tell about the future, so let us talk only of the present. That concerns us most." ”