If the
Marshall tradition had made it easier for her to achieve this not very
elevated goal, she might have perceived more clearly where her rapid
feet were taking her. Just now, for example, there was nothing in her
consciousness but the embittered knowledge that there was no maid to
open the door when Mrs. Fiske should ring.
She was a keen-witted modern young woman of eighteen, with a
well-trained mind stored with innumerable facts of science, but it
must be admitted that at this moment she reverted with passionate
completeness to quite another type. She would have given--she would
have given a year of her life--one of her fingers--all her knowledge
of history--anything! if the Marshalls had possessed what she felt any
decently prosperous grocer's family ought to possess--a well-appointed
maid in the hall to open the door, take Mrs. Fiske's card, show her
into the living-room, and go decently and in order to summon the
mistress of the house. Instead she saw with envenomed foresight what
would happen. At the unusual sound of the bell, her mother, who was
playing dominoes with Lawrence in one of his convalescences, would
open the door with her apron still on, and her spectacles probably
pushed up, rustic fashion, on top of her head. And then their
illustrious visitor, used as of course she was to ceremony in social
matters, would not know whether this was the maid, or her hostess;
and Mrs.
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