The Copy-Cat, and Other StoriesFreeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
General
The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories
Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
They all settled again to the play, but the young lady and the two
men continued glancing at Miss Carew. She had recovered her dignity of
manner, but not her color. Moreover, she had a bewildered expression.
Resolutely she abstained from glancing again at her amethyst comb
in Viola Longstreet's ash-blond hair, and gradually, by a course of
subconscious reasoning as she carefully played her cards, she arrived
at a conclusion which caused her color to return and the bewildered
expression to disappear. When refreshments were served, the amiable
young lady said, kindly:
“You look quite yourself, now, dear Miss Carew, but at one time while we
were playing I was really alarmed. You were very pale.”
“I did not feel in the least ill,” replied Jane Carew. She smiled her
Carew smile at the young lady. Jane had settled it with herself that
of course Viola had borrowed that amethyst comb, appealing to Margaret.
Viola ought not to have done that; she should have asked her, Miss
Carew; and Jane wondered, because Viola was very well bred; but of
course that was what had happened. Jane had come down before Viola,
leaving Margaret in her room, and Viola had asked her. Jane did not then
remember that Viola had not even been told that there was an amethyst
comb in existence. She remembered when Margaret, whose face was as pale
and bewildered as her own, mentioned it, when she was brushing her hair.
“I saw it, first thing. Miss Jane,” said Margaret. “Louisa and I were
on the landing, and I looked down and saw your amethyst comb in Mrs.
Longstreet's hair.”
“She had asked you for it, because I had gone down-stairs?” asked Jane,
feebly.
“No, Miss Jane. I had not seen her. I went out right after you did.
Louisa had finished Mrs. Longstreet, and she and I went down to the
mailbox to post a letter, and then we sat on the landing, and--I saw
your comb.”
“Have you,” asked Jane, “looked in the jewelcase?”
“Yes, Miss Jane.”
“And it is not there?”
“It is not there. Miss Jane.” Margaret spoke with a sort of solemn
intoning. She recognized what the situation implied, and she, who
fitted squarely and entirely into her humble state, was aghast before a
hitherto unimagined occurrence. She could not, even with the evidence
of her senses against a lady and her mistress's old friend, believe in
them. Had Jane told her firmly that she had not seen that comb in that
ash-blond hair she might have been hypnotized into agreement. But Jane
simply stared at her, and the Carew dignity was more shaken than she had
ever seen it.
“Bring the jewel-case here, Margaret,” ordered Jane in a gasp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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