The Iron Woman | Page 6

was concerned, he was a fool for his pains,
because human critters ("I'm one of 'em myself,") were a bad lot and it
would be a good thing if they all died young!
"Oh, you have a fine bark, friend Ferguson," she said, "but when it
comes to a bite, I guess most folks get a kiss from you."
"Kiss?" said Robert Ferguson, horrified; "not much!"
They were very good friends, these two, each growling at, disapproving
of, and completely trusting the other. Mrs. Maitland's chief disapproval
of her superintendent--for her reproaches about his bark were really
expressions of admiration-- her serious disapproval was based on the
fact that, when the season permitted, he broke the Sabbath by grubbing
in his garden, instead of going to church. A grape-arbor ran the length
of this garden, and in August the Isabellas, filmed with soot, had a
flavor, Robert Ferguson thought, finer than could be found in any of the
vineyards lying in the hot sunshine on the banks of the river, far out of
reach of Mercer's smoke. There was a flagstone path around the arbor,
and then borders of perennials against brick walls thick with ivy or

hidden by trellised peach-trees. All summer long bees came to murmur
among the flowers, and every breeze that blew over them carried some
sweetness to the hot and tired streets outside. It was a spot of perfume
and peace, and it was no wonder that the hard-working, sad-eyed man
liked to spend his Sundays in it. But "remembering the Sabbath" was
his employer's strong point. Mrs. Maitland kept the Fourth
Commandment with passion. Her Sundays, dividing each six days of
extraordinary activity, were arid stretches of the unspeakable dullness
of idleness. When Blair grew up he used to look back at those Sundays
and shudder. There was church and Sunday-school in the morning, then
a cold dinner, for cold roast beef was Mrs. Maitland's symbol of
Sabbatical holiness. Then an endless, vacant afternoon, spent always
indoors. Certain small, pious books were permitted the two
children--_Little Henry and His Bearer, The Ministering Children_, and
like moral food; but no games, no walks, no playing in the orchard.
Silence and weary idleness and Little Henry's holy arrogances. Though
the day must have been as dreary to Mrs. Maitland as it was to her son
and daughter, she never winced. She sat in the parlor, dressed in black
silk, and read The Presbyterian and the Bible. She never allowed
herself to look at her desk in the dining-room, or even at her knitting,
which on week-days when she had no work to do was a great resource;
she looked at the clock a good deal, and sometimes she sighed, then
applied herself to The Presbyterian. She went to bed at half-past seven
as against eleven or twelve on other nights, first reading, with
extraordinary rapidity, her "Chapter." Mrs. Maitland had a "system" by
which she was able to read the Bible through once a year. She
frequently recommended it to her superintendent; to her way of
thinking such reading was accounted to her as righteousness.
Refreshed by a somnolent Sunday, she would rush furiously into
business on Monday morning, and Mr. Robert Ferguson, who never
went to church, followed in her wake, doing her bidding with grim and
admiring thoroughness. If not "worked to death," he was, at any rate,
absorbed in her affairs. Even when he went home at night, and, on
summer evenings, fell to grubbing in his narrow back yard, where his
niece "helped" him by pushing a little wheelbarrow over the mossy
flagstones,--even then he did not dismiss Mrs. Maitland's business from

his mind. He was scrupulous to say, as he picked up the weeds
scattered from the wheelbarrow, "Have you been a good little girl
to-day, Elizabeth?" but all the while, in his own thoughts he was going
over matters at the Works. On Sundays he managed to get far enough
away from business to interrogate Miss White about his niece:
"I hope Elizabeth is behaving herself, Miss White?"
"Oh yes; she is a dear, good child."
"Well, you never can tell about children,--or anybody else. Keep a
sharp eye on her, Miss White. And be careful, please, about vanity. I
thought I saw her looking in the mirror in the hall this morning. Please
discourage any signs of vanity."
"She hasn't a particle of vanity!" Miss White said warmly.
But in spite of such assurances, Mr. Ferguson was always falling into
bleakly apprehensive thoughts of his little girl, obstinately denying his
pride in her, and allowing himself only the meager hope that she would
"turn out fairly decently." Vanity was his especial concern, and he was
more than once afraid he had discovered it: Elizabeth was not allowed
to go to dancing-school--