JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER

Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same race, as Theophil."

Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and managing just in the same way, prince or peasant."

The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different from each other, and perhaps she was right.

About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil.

But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she could show you real treasures.

I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance.

Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen."

And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender.

Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle that old question of the snows of yester-year.

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in.

Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time.

Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer.

Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!"

How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home."