well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her
window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs.
Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the
relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts
and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart
somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to
Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could
find little other.
Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs.
Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and
thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had
these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after
all, pretty hard to endure.
The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly
neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and
the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as
she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not
draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt
bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward
Dot and Ray.
Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never
went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her
sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young
carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and
discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what
shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a
village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course,
Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a
voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared
mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's
proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew
beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between
the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally
and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took
in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though
the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all
these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social
"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic
benediction, all the way down.
I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie
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