It was the beginning of calling the new mother “She.”

26

THE BRIDAL CHAMBER was on the second floor, and was so beautiful that the door was kept locked. No matter how often the bride went in and out She carefully took her keys from her pocket and shut off this paradise from prying little eyes. As the bookcase, parlor, piano, icebox, clothes chests, and closets were also kept locked, the girls were resigned to the bedroom’s beauties being denied them. They had viewed it once on a tour of the house with Aunt Lois, and once Florrie had taken a little colored girl of her acquaintance up over the porch roof to peer in the window, for the secrecy had persuaded her there must be fairy queens and magic carpets there. But there was only the canopy bed left from the Furness estate, draped in pink silkalene, and the new bride’s gold dresser set and knicknacks. At night they could hear the door being locked and what seemed sounds of quarreling—“Now, Harry! Harry, now stop! Harry, if you don’t stop, now, I’ll never forgive you. Now, now, now, Harry, stop!”

The second Mrs. Willard had changed very little since her first appearance in London Junction as Idah Hawkins, nurse to the first Mrs. Willard’s last illness. Motherhood had added no curves to her slight figure, so She resorted to modest padding here and there for style, and Lena on a snooping trip reported that the lady’s suit with weights and paddings actually weighed more than She did. For dressy purposes there was a jar of Hygienic Vegetable Rouge, which She rubbed carefully into a small circle in each cheek. Her faded scanty hair was decorated with switch, curls, and other devices of a richer golden hue, and when other ladies admired the coiffure She modestly boasted that it took three-quarters of an hour to get it that way. She said most women didn’t have the patience, but She had always taken pains with her appearance and saw no reason for a real lady to let herself slide. She liked her little girl to look nice, too, and it was funny to hear the poor child cry just because the other girls had dirtied her up. When someone referred to her first encounter with Harry Willard, a twinkle came into her pale marble eyes and She tittered, “I had my eye on him right off, even then.” It seems that when her first husband, Dr. Turner, passed on, the very first thing She had done was to buy some stock in the London Furniture Company. Then She asked Mr. Carson, the company president, what had happened to Harry Willard and Mr. Carson said, by George, he needed a man like Willard again, so he sent for him. That was how it started, what with her business trips to the Junction, and Mr. Carson trying to locate Harry again, old differences forgotten.

“Well, it takes a lot of courage to marry a widower with three little girls,” Mary Evelyn’s mother said, the day of her call, for which she had had fifty new calling cards specially engraved, in addition to purchasing a new Alice blue suit with red buttons and trimming to show that other ladies in London Junction besides the new Mrs. Willard knew the styles. The new bride gravely acknowledged her guest’s compliment.