Sallie

“ 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! ”

“ When he addresses Sallie his whole manner changes, just as most people's idiom undergoes revision when they write a letter. You can see the dear fellow pulling himself together and, metaphorically, shooting out his cuffs and straightening his tie as a preliminary to opening fire. His manners are superb, elaborate, suburban. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The father is the sexton, it is true, and attends the furnace and rings the bell; but it is Sallie's care that keeps seat and desk and window so beautifully free from dust or stain. Oh, they live busy lives, and happy ones. Sallie trusted not in vain in her father's promise that night, when he put his weak will into the pledge ”

“ 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. ”

“ "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. ”

“ If I were to tell you who he is and what he is doing to-day, you'd understand the awful risk the country ran through the Commander-in-Chief of India giving commands to rabbits instead of soldiers."
"I'm glad he got through," said Sallie meditatively.
"You can never keep a good man back," remarked the General in that modified tone of voice he always adopted when speaking to Sallie.
"Wot's 'e goin' to do if 'e's got various veins in 'is legs, I wonder?" I heard Bindle mutter as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wherever there were human beings, those human beings stared at Sally and began to follow her; or, if they couldn’t follow her with their feet, did so with astonished, eager eyes as long as she was in sight. Holy Communion was the only one of the Sunday services Mr. Pinner let her go to in Woodles, because it was sparsely attended, and the few worshippers were women. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Salvatia—‘No, no, dearest Jocelyn—not Sally, not Sally,’ she begged on his calling her that, for she had a theory that names had the power of making you be like them, and a Sally was foredoomed to unredeemable vulgarity—should have masters (perhaps mistresses would be better,) down from London, when once Mrs. Luke was married to Mr. Thorpe and could afford things; regular teachers who would give her lessons at stated hours, while she herself would give her lessons at all the unstated ones. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Could anybody be doing anything very wrong who had such a splendid car to sit in, and such a respectful and attentive young gentleman driving it?
§
Mr. Pinner disillusioned her.
For many years he hadn’t tasted such quiet happiness, such contentment and well-being, as during the four weeks he had been without Sally. Her marriage to a gentleman, to one of the scholars from Cambridge, was known to every one in the village, and he was proud of it, very proud. Sally, besides having been handed over safe and sound to some one else’s care, had risen in life and was now a lady. ”

“ IV § And while these things were happening in Almond Tree Cottage, Jocelyn, in the private sitting-room of the Exeter hotel, was behaving, it seemed to Sally, in the most strange way.
If this was what married gentlemen were like, then she wondered that there should be any married ladies left. Enough to kill them off like flies, thought Sally, helplessly involved in frequent and alarming embraces. ”

“ I can’t do without you. We can’t. When I go back to Cambridge—and of course I’m going back—you must come too. You’re going to live with us there. Everything depends on you. All my future, all my happiness——’
And Sally, over whose head these words were being tossed, sitting very rigid, for Mrs. Luke’s hand was still on her hair, and wholly unaccustomed to displays of family affection, once again said to herself, just for company’s sake and to keep her courage up, ‘Well, I’m blest.’
§
Mrs. Luke, however, was brought back by Jocelyn’s words to a vivid sense of Mr. Thorpe. ”

“ Sally had no cravings that he could discover; she was mere lovely acquiescence, content—and with what exquisiteness—to be.
Still, in this world one couldn’t just sit silent, and serene, and wonderful; and the minute circumstances obliged her to say something her discrepances worried him again. It really was surprising: pure perfection outside, and inside—he hated to think it, but more and more feared he recognised—pure Pinner. He must take her in hand. He must teach her, train her in the manners expected in her new sphere of life. ”

“ Quite close to Cambridge, within easy reach of young Luke, and in it, all-powerful even now in spite of his age, certainly all-powerful when it came to putting the fear of God into an undergraduate, or whatever he was, his ancient but still inflammable father. Naturally at ninety-three the old man consisted principally of embers; but these embers could still be fanned into a partial glow by the sight of a good horse or a beautiful woman, and Charles would only need to show Sally to him to have the old man on her side. ”

“ His heart was still the heart of a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened—even in this secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it would. Sally’s conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and restlessness made it certain. ”

“ At home they usedn’t to jump down one’s throat if one asked a question. ‘Snug,’ thought Sally, her head{79} drooping in wistful recollection, while with the point of her umbrella she affectionately stroked the sides of the tin trunk, ‘snug at ’ome in the shop—snug at ’ome in the lil’ shop—’ and whatever else being married to a gentleman was, it wasn’t snug. ”