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
MISS JANE CAREW was at the railroad station waiting for the New York
train. She was about to visit her friend, Mrs. Viola Longstreet. With
Miss Carew was her maid, Margaret, a middleaged New England woman,
attired in the stiffest and most correct of maid-uniforms. She carried
an old, large sole-leather bag, and also a rather large sole-leather
jewel-case. The jewel-case, carried openly, was rather an unusual
sight at a New England railroad station, but few knew what it was. They
concluded it to be Margaret's special handbag. Margaret was a very tall,
thin woman, unbending as to carriage and expression. The one thing out
of absolute plumb about Margaret was her little black bonnet. That was
askew. Time had bereft the woman of so much hair that she could fasten
no head-gear with security, especially when the wind blew, and that
morning there was a stiff gale. Margaret's bonnet was cocked over one
eye. Miss Carew noticed it.
“Margaret, your bonnet is crooked,” she said.
Margaret straightened her bonnet, but immediately the bonnet veered
again to the side, weighted by a stiff jet aigrette. Miss Carew observed
the careen of the bonnet, realized that it was inevitable, and did not
mention it again. Inwardly she resolved upon the removal of the jet
aigrette later on. Miss Carew was slightly older than Margaret, and
dressed in a style somewhat beyond her age. Jane Carew had been alert
upon the situation of departing youth. She had eschewed gay colors and
extreme cuts, and had her bonnets made to order, because there were no
longer anything but hats in the millinery shop. The milliner in Wheaton,
where Miss Carew lived, had objected, for Jane Carew inspired reverence.
“A bonnet is too old for you. Miss Carew,” she said. “Women much older
than you wear hats.”
“I trust that I know what is becoming to a woman of my years, thank you.
Miss Waters,” Jane had replied, and the milliner had meekly taken her
order.
After Miss Carew had left, the milliner told her girls that she had
never seen a woman so perfectly crazy to look her age as Miss Carew.
“And she a pretty woman, too,” said the milliner; “as straight as an
arrer, and slim, and with all that hair, scarcely turned at all.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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