Chapter III: Humiliations

Nellie had been just one week in her new surroundings, a week full of many new experiences for the little girl, and not a few trials. Her uncle had aroused himself from his preoccupation on the night of her arrival sufficiently to ask her about her father and her home, but beyond a pleasant salutation at breakfast and dinner he never again seemed conscious of her existence. Her aunt treated her with polite indifference, if there be such a thing, and Inez snubbed her. Marcy exerted herself for three whole days to make her cousin comfortable, but after that, having grown accustomed to her presence, old habits reasserted themselves, and she fell back into her favorite pursuits, leaving Nellie to her own devices.

The little girl, accustomed to the loving intimacy of her simpler family life, had a hard time, and would have suffered more had it not been for the younger children. These regarded her as bees must regard a new and very honey-full variety of blossom. They never tired of hearing her talk of the mischievous brothers and sisters whom she had left in Prairie Rest, where, it seemed to them, life was as enchanting as a fairy tale.

Bob no longer regretted that Nellie was not a boy when he found out that she could bat straight and strong from her shoulder, throw a ball much straighter and swifter than he could, and heard her tell how she had ridden Mazeppa, the lively three-year-old bay, barebacked, and clung so tight he could not throw her when he tried. Grace found a cousin of twelve could be more satisfactory than one of six when she discovered how beautifully Nellie could play house, what marvellous new games she invented, and what triumphs of skill her doll’s dress-making was. Sometimes Marcy, seeing how her younger brothers and sisters clung to Nellie, felt a faint pang of jealousy, half grudging the love she had never tried to win. In a vague, far-off way new thoughts were beginning to form in Marcy’s active brain since Nellie came.

School was a great trial to Nellie. It was no small ordeal to face all those fashionably dressed, chattering girls, whose difference from herself she was not slow to feel. Nor did it console her after the first day to find that she knew a great deal more than they did, for the girls did not seem to think it the slightest consequence, and made the most absurd mistakes in recitations with unruffled serenity.

On the fourth day of her visit the Hales, whose criticism Inez had dreaded, came to call on the new cousin. Nellie, accustomed to little girls coming to see her like children, gave her abundant hair two hasty strokes, and turned from the glass ready to go down, without even taking off the little black alpaca apron, which, to Inez’s disgust, she wore about the house to protect the front of her dress.

“You can’t go down like that, Nellie,” cried Inez sharply. “Change your dress and look your best; the Hales have lots of money.”

“Well, but I haven’t,” said Nellie wonderingly. “I don’t see why I must wear my best dress.”

“I can’t stop to talk; but you must do it. I’ll go down, and you come with Marcy, and for mercy’s sake don’t say anything queer,” cried Inez impatiently.

“Now, I wonder,” Nellie began to say, but checked herself, obediently put on her plain best dress, and was ready when Marcy came.

“Happy to meet you, Miss Merrick,” murmured two very stylishly dressed, becrimped, and bedecked girls as they were introduced to Nellie. Their faces were thin, their voices shrill, they were little girls in years, but had the air of full-blown young ladies; no greater contrast to them could have been found than Nellie’s rosy face and childish air.

“Do you care for the theatre, Miss Merrick?” asked the elder, scanning with inward wonder “poor Inez’s queer cousin.”

“I never went,” answered Nellie. “The girls say we shall go Saturday afternoon, and I can’t wait.”

“I suppose you don’t have much worth seeing where you live,” said Rose Hale.

“They have grand plays in Kansas City,” said Nellie; “and Prairie Rest--that’s my home--is only an hour’s ride away. Most people go there when there’s something fine; but I don’t.”

“Must be tiresome,” murmured Jennie Hale, while Inez vainly tried to think of something to say, dreading Nellie’s candor.

“Oh! my, no,” Nellie said cheerfully. “It’s not that. I just love riding in the cars; but we can’t afford to go. The theatre tickets and the fare would be too much for us; the round trip to Kansas City, excursion ticket, costs ninety-four cents, and of course I wouldn’t go unless my sister and eldest brother could go, and it would cost a lot; so we all stay at home and act Shakespeare in the barn chamber.”

Inez was crimson and ready to cry with mortification at this speech, while Marcy’s eyes danced with fun as she looked from Nellie’s unconscious face to the shocked expression of the Hales and her sister’s agony.

“Dear me!” murmured the elder Hale. “How peculiar!”

“Shakespeare was an English poet,” Marcy said wickedly. “Indeed, he was the greatest of English poets. I thought you mightn’t understand what my cousin meant by ‘acting Shakespeare.’”

“You poor girls; it’s awfully hard on you to have to teach her our ways,” the Hales said to Marcy and Inez, who followed them to the door.

Inez almost sobbed. “I feel so mortified,” she began; but Marcy cut her short. “If only she could teach us,” she said. “You can hardly appreciate them, I suppose, but she has such perfect manners, and never tries for one moment to be anything but her honest self.”

“Marcy,” said Inez after their guests had gone, “I’ll die of shame if Nellie Merrick goes on like this. Think of telling the Hales she was too poor to go to the theatre! It’ll be all over New York.”

“Not quite,” retorted Marcy. “The trouble is Nellie’s too nice for such snobs. Can’t you see they were just as horrid and rude as they could be? And there’s one thing certain, Inez Merrick, I’d stand up for my own cousin in my own house if I were you.”

“Well, look at her dresses,” sighed Inez, changing her complaint.

“Yes,” replied Marcy, “I have been looking at them, and I’m going to ask papa to give her what she needs.”

The result of Marcy’s appeal to her father was that Nellie went to the matinée on Saturday clad in the prettiest little fur-trimmed jacket, a hat so delightful that it grieved her to be obliged to take it off and lay it on her knee, and with her face shining with the excitement of her first theatre-going and her fashionable raiment. From the moment the curtain rose she was lost to everything around her; indeed, so completely lost that even Marcy’s indifference to the opinion of the world was destined to receive a severe shock. The play was a war drama, as exciting as it well could be, and in the third act the heroine was in mortal danger at the hands of the villain, and Nellie, forgetting everything in the anguish of the moment, rose in her seat and cried aloud: “Oh, save her! save her!”

Her cousins clutched her skirts, and had her down again in an instant; but it had been done, and every one who sat near them looked at blushing Nellie and laughed.

“I’ll never go out with her again--never,” protested Inez with tears in her eyes. “What’s the use of getting things to make her look like other people if she’s going to act that way?”

But she did go out with Nellie again, and that in a few days. The three girls were invited to a luncheon party, and at the last moment Marcy had too severe a cold to go with them.

“Do your best and watch other people,” advised Marcy, to whom Nellie confided her fear of not knowing the right thing to do. “Don’t bother with Inez too much, or she’ll make you crazy. You’ll have better manners than most of them, because you don’t try to be finicky; and if they don’t know it, so much the worse for them.”

So Nellie went away comforted; but the party could hardly have been called a success.

Inez came to Marcy after their return in a towering rage. “It’s simply awful, Marcella Merrick,” she sobbed. “I’ll never be able to hold my head up again.”

“Now, what is it?” asked Marcy, both amused and anxious.

“Well, there’s no use talking about Nellie’s taking the wrong fork for her salad, and not knowing how to use her finger-bowl, and saying ‘No, thank you,’ and ‘If you please,’ to the waiter, though I thought that was bad enough when she did it; but when Mrs. Greene asked her if she wouldn’t have some mushrooms she said, ‘I don’t know what they are,’ instead of taking some and keeping still. And another time, when Mrs. Greene said: ‘I hope you are fond of chocolate cake; I think most little people are,’ Nellie said: ‘Yes, ma’am, I am. My mother makes it perfectly delicious, and she can never make enough for us children. She says she should like to have a girl just to make chocolate cake, if ever we get rich. But,’ she said, ‘I’ve learned to make it now, so ma won’t have to do it all.’”

“What did the rest do?” asked Marcy, half-laughing, but looking vexed too, for these things sounded worse when repeated than when one saw Nellie’s cheerful simplicity in saying them.

“The Hales laughed, and May Vanderberg tossed her head, but Madeleine Greene gave them a look and said: ‘Isn’t that fun? Lots of the girls go to cooking-school, but it’s much nicer to learn at home. I think it must be lovely to live in the country; you can’t do such things in the big city houses.’”

“I always did say Madeleine Greene was the truest lady of all the girls,” said Marcy warmly.

“Well, I’ll never, never, never go anywhere with Nellie Merrick again! I never was so humiliated in my life,” sobbed Inez in a burst of angry tears.

“You needn’t go with her,” said Marcy. “I’ll take her about till she gets used to things. I don’t mind so much, because I think there’s something wrong somewhere, only I can’t quite explain what I mean. I think Nellie needn’t tell so much to strangers, but it’s far nicer than pretending every minute, like the Hales and May Vanderberg. However, I’ll go out with her all the time and I’ll look after her.”

Poor Marcy! She little dreamed how near lay the end of her happy days, and how short would be the time when her gay young feet could carry her whither she would.