Quicksilver Sue

Laura Richards

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Quicksilver Sue

CHAPTER I

SOMETHING EXCITING

Mother! Mother! he has a daughter! Isn't that perfectly fine?"

Mrs. Penrose looked up wearily; her head ached, and Sue was so noisy!

"Who has a daughter?" she asked. "Can't you speak a little lower, Sue? Your voice goes through my head like a needle. Who is it that has a daughter?"

Sue's bright face fell for an instant, and she swung her sunbonnet impatiently; but the next moment she started again at full speed.

"The new agent for the Pashmet Mills, Mother. Everybody is talking about it. They are going to live at the hotel. They have taken the best rooms, and Mr. Binns has had them all painted and papered, – the rooms, I mean, of course, – and new curtains, and everything. Her name is Clarice, and she is fifteen, and very pretty; and he is real rich – "

"Very rich," corrected her mother, with a little frown of pain.

"Very rich," Sue went on; "and her clothes are simply fine; and – and – oh, Mother, isn't it elegant?"

"Sue, where have you been?" asked her mother, rousing herself. (Bad English was one of the few things that did rouse Mrs. Penrose.) "Whom have you been talking with, child? I am sure you never hear Mary Hart say 'isn't it elegant'!"

"Oh! Mary is a schoolma'am, Mother. But I never did say it before, and I won't again – truly I won't. Annie Rooney told me, and she said it, and so I didn't think. Annie is going to be waitress at the hotel, you know, and she's just as excited as I am about it."

"Annie Rooney is not a suitable companion for you, my daughter, and I am not interested in hotel gossip. Besides, my head aches too much to talk any more."

"I'll go and tell Mary!" said Sue.

"Will you hand me my medicine before you go, Sue?"

But Sue was already gone. The door banged, and the mother sank back with a weary, fretful sigh. Why was Sue so impetuous, so unguided? Why was she not thoughtful and considerate, like Mary Hart?

Sue whirled upstairs like a breeze, and rushed into her own room. The room, a pleasant, sunny one, looked as if a breeze were blowing in it all day long. A jacket was tossed on one chair, a dress on another. The dressing-table was a cheerful litter of ribbons, photographs, books, papers, and hats. (This made it hard to find one's brush and comb sometimes; but then, it was convenient to have the other things where one could get at them.) There was a writing-table, but the squirrel lived on that; it was the best place to put the cage, because he liked the sun. (Sue never would have thought of moving the table somewhere else and leaving the space for the cage.) And the closet was entirely full and running over. The walls were covered with pictures of every variety, from the Sistine Madonna down to a splendid four-in-hand cut out of the "Graphic." Most of them had something hanging on the frame – a bird's nest, or a branch of barberries, or a tangle of gray moss. Sometimes the picture could still be seen; again, it could not, except when the wind blew the adornment aside. Altogether, the room looked as if some one had a good time in it, and as if that some one were always in a hurry; and this was the case.

"Shall I telephone," said Sue, "or shall I send a pigeon? Oh, I can't stop to go out to the dove-cote; I'll telephone."

She ran to the window, where there was a curious arrangement of wires running across the street to the opposite house. She rang a bell and pulled a wire, and another bell jingled in the distance. Then she took up an object which looked like (and indeed was) the half of a pair of opera-glasses with the glass taken out. Holding this to her mouth, she roared softly: "Hallo, Central! Hallo!"

There was a pause; then a voice across the street replied in muffled tones: "Hallo! What number?"

"Number five hundred and seven. Miss Mary Hart."

Immediately a girl appeared at the opposite window, holding the other barrel of the opera-glass to her lips.

"Hallo!" she shouted. "What do y