CHAPTER VII

"LITTLE PIGLETS OF ENGLISH"

I doubt if even a universal _entente cordiale_ will ever make the French mind and the English mind think alike.

Now it happened before Regina and her husband left Paris that Madame de la Barre intimated through the girls that she would like to have a little confidential chat with her pupils' mother.

"Mother," said Julia to Regina, "Madame wants to see you."

"She has seen me," said Regina.

"Yes, yes, mother, but she wants to see you _toute seule_. I suppose she wants to tell you some delinquencies of ours, or something."

"I hope not," said Regina.

"Well, dear, you must expect us to be human, like other girls. We have never been in any trouble since we came here, and I don't know why she wants to see you, but, anyway, she asks if you will do her the favor of taking tea with her to-morrow afternoon at four o'clock."

"I will," said Regina.

"She doesn't speak one word of English, you know," said Julia.

"We shall communicate somehow," said Regina, with a superb air.

"I don't know how," said Julia, "since you can't speak two words of French--"

"_Excuse_ me," said Regina, pointedly.

"Well, excuse me too, mother--I didn't mean to be rude. But your French isn't equal to your Latin, is it?"

"I will be there," said Regina, with a distinct accession of dignity.

And so, punctual to the moment, Regina appeared in the _salon_ of the schoolmistress. Their mode of communication was original, it was also a little difficult, but both being determined women, they overcame the difficulties of the situation with a supreme indifference to the effect the one might have upon the other. As a matter of fact, Julia had been a little wide of the mark when she had declared to her mother that Madame did not speak one word of English. Madame spoke a little more English than Regina spoke French, and by a series of contortions, gesticulations, and other efforts which I need not attempt to reproduce here, Madame de la Barre contrived to make known to Mrs. Whittaker her object in seeking for the interview. And her object in seeking the interview was that she should explain to her that she considered the taste in dress of the demoiselles Whittaker to be something too atrocious for words.

"_C'est affreux! c'est affreux_," she exclaimed, when she found that Regina was a little dense of understanding. "Horreeble--horreeble!"

"I have never," said Regina, speaking very slowly and distinctly, and with an indulgent air as if she were communicating with someone a little short of being an idiot, "I have never trained my children to care about those matters."

"But they are young ladies! It is most important," Madame exclaimed, with quite a tragic air.

"It will come," said Regina, waving her substantial hand with a vast gesture, as if good taste in dressing was likely to drop from the clouds, "it will come. I never worry about things that are not essential."

"But it is essential for a young lady--a demoiselle--it is--it is for her life."

Poor Madame de la Barre! She tried very hard indeed to explain that the many purchases made by the young ladies were not such as should have been made by young girls not yet entered into the great world. She made no impression upon Regina.

"These are small matters," she said, with a magnificent air; "not essentials in any way. They will make mistakes at first--I don't doubt it, Madame--we have all done it in our day, but they will learn, oh, they will learn."

Madame shrugged her shoulders. She felt that she was dealing with a fool of the first water, upon whom valuable breath was wasted. After all, these were _English_ girls. What did it matter? They were going to live in a land where it is the rule for women to make themselves such objects as Madame Whittaker herself. It is no exaggeration to say that when Mrs. Whittaker had finally swept out of the schoolmistress's presence, Madame de la Barre sat down and closed her eyes with a genuine shudder.

"What does it matter, these pigs of English, what they wear? Thou art too good-natured, Heloise," she went on, apostrophizing herself. "Thou canst forbid these little piglets of English from wearing their too disgraceful garments. What happens to them after they have left thy roof is no concern of thine. Thou art too good-natured, Heloise!"

So the "little piglets of English" continued unchecked in their career of vicious millinery, and when the time came for them to return to the paternal roof, they went, taking with them a stock of garments calculated to make the Park, as they put it, "sit up."

And truly the Park did sit up, for the appearance of Regina's two girls was something quite out of the common.

"It is the latest fashion," said Regina, with an air of conviction to a neighbor who remarked that Maudie's hat was a little startling. "The girls brought all their things from Paris. It is the seat of good dressing."

You will observe that Regina never left any doubt in expressing her opinions. Hers was a positive nature. She would say, "My daughters _are_ beautiful, my daughters _are_ elegant, my daughters attract an enormous amount of attention," but never "I _think_ my daughters are"--this, that, or the other.

So she gave forth, with the air of one whose fiat could not be questioned, the intimation that as Maudie and Julia's things had come from Paris, they must be the _dernier cri_.

And the Park thought they were horrid.

Poor Regina! She was very happy in the return of her girls, so happy that she took a little holiday from her public work, and spent a whole week in talking things over, in arranging and rearranging their rooms, in examining all their purchases, in discussing what kind of life they should live in the immediate future.

"Now, what are your own ideas?" she demanded, on the second day after the return home of the girls, when they had settled down to tea and muffins.

Maudie looked at Julia. As usual, Julia answered for Maudie. Regina herself was full of suppressed eagerness.

"Well, if you really wish us to tell you exactly what we do want, mother," said Julia, "we will put it in a nutshell. We want father to give us an allowance."

"A decent allowance," put in Maudie.

"Yes, yes, dears; yes, yes," murmured Regina, who had prepared herself for an unfolding of great schemes, such as would have swayed her at her girls' age.

"The kind of allowance," Julia went on, "that he ought to give to girls of our age and position--that is to say, of _our_ age and _his_ position. Then we sha'n't go making sillies of ourselves; we shall know how to cut our coat according to our cloth."

"And how much do you think such an allowance ought to be?" Regina inquired.

"Oh, about a hundred a year each," said Julia.

"A hundred a year? That's a very ample allowance. I never spend more than that myself."

"Well, mother, it just depends on what you want us to be. If you want us to be smart, well-dressed girls with some position in the world, we couldn't do it under. We have talked it over thoroughly with French girls who know what society is, and with English girls of the same sort, and they all say that a hundred a year is the least a girl can dress herself decently on."

"And that would include--?" Regina questioned.

"It would include our clothes, our club subscriptions--"

"Your what?"

"Our club subscriptions."

"Oh, you are going to join a club, are you?"

"Of course. You have a club, mother. We want some place where we can rest the soles of our feet when we are in London. It isn't as if you lived right in Mayfair, you know."

"No, no; you are quite right. I have no objection to your joining a club, or doing anything else that is reasonable. So it would include your club subscriptions?"

"Oh yes, it would have to do that. And our personal expenses. We shouldn't have to look to father for any money other than an occasional present which he might like to give us if we were good, or if he could afford it; or on some special occasion."

"I see."

"Then we should like to have--er--er" and here Julia stopped short and eyed her mother with a certain amount of apprehension.

"Well, go on, my darling. You would like to have what?"

"We should like to have a sitting-room of our own."

"Oh!"

"To which," Julia went on, emboldened by her mother's mild expression of face, "to which we could ask our friends without upsetting the house, and--and--and--"

"Go on," said Regina.

"Well, you see, most girls nowadays have an At Home day of their own--just for their own friends, irrespective of their mothers."

"I haven't time for an At Home day," said Regina. "I used to have one, but I gave it up when you went to Paris."

"I think that was rather foolish of you, mother," said Julia. "A woman is nothing nowadays if she doesn't have an At Home day. I don't quite see myself what all your work brings you."

"Brings me?" echoed Regina.

"Yes, brings you. What's the good of working day and night, toiling into the small hours of the morning for a lot of other people? What do they ever do for you, mother?"

"Do for me?" Regina seemed suddenly to have become an echo of her own daughter. "I don't know that anybody does anything for me."

"No, it is always Mrs. Albert Whittaker toiling and fagging and slaving for other people's glorification. I don't see the force of it. It seems to us," she went on, with a certain air of severity which ought to have amused Regina, but did nothing of the kind, "it seems to us that you get the worst of it in every way. We think, mother, that you ought to be very glad that we have come home to take care of you."

"Oh! Then you," said Regina, with a tinge of sarcasm in her tones, "you and Maudie are to have all the independence, and I am to be taken care of? That is very kind of you. Now, once for all let me speak, and then for ever after hold my peace. I give you, as long as you remain in your father's house, I give you the same amount of liberty that I had in mine and which I wish to have for myself now, but I give it you on one condition, which is that you never abuse it. If ever you should disappoint me by doing so--which not for one moment do I anticipate--I should instantly withdraw that free gift of liberty. But I want you to remember that while you have your liberty, I still need and require mine. One is so apt to forget, and particularly when one is devotedly attached to anyone, the rights and liberties of others. You are quite welcome, my children, to have your day at home, and your father will certainly not wish to curtail you in the matter of provision therefor. I shall not expect that your little entertainments will come out of your own personal income. At any time that you seek my advice on any matter, it will be there ready for your use. I shall never give it to you unsought, unless I should see you going absolutely wrong. I will only ask you to remember that before all things I have striven, since you were tiny babies, first and foremost to preserve the originality of your minds. The more original you are, the more completely will you please me. There is so much in the circumstances and in the lives of women that tend to trammel and to stifle their better judgment and their better selves, that they have but little chance of letting any originality of mind which they may possess have fair play. You are singularly blessed in having an enlightened father and mother, who wish you to be in most respects as free as air. Take care, therefore, children, that you don't lose sight of this precious opportunity. Let honor and originality go hand in hand. With your gifts and your beauty, you must land yourselves upon the very crest of the wave. There," she went on, letting the tension of her feelings find relief in a little laugh, "there ends my little homily!" And she stretched forth her firm white hand and helped herself to the last piece of muffin in the dish.