Fashionable Old Style.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 826, 30 December 1887, Page 5

Fashionable Old Style.

HOW IT IMPRESSED AUNT PEGGY. Aunt Peggy, coming down from her place in the country to visit a neioe in the city, writes home an agonising account of her condition to Sister Becky Jane. She says :

«i always loved Letty Maria, you know, and when I heard she’d got married to a real nice young man Eben Stillwell I was most tickled to death, and jest as soon as I could I come down to see her. But tonight, as I sit up in my bedroom writing, the tears keep a droppin’ on the paper, I m so disappointed and kind of upsot. ‘ Firstly, instead of a nice two-story house, as I expected, the child has got a floor through. She calls it a flat, and it’s clear at the top of the house, and you have to go np to it in a kind of a hist like that over to the mill. When you get there the ceilings are high, I don’t deny, and the windows an’t bad ; but, deary me ! the landlord has put a kind of dirty black-green paper on the walls, and there an’t no doors. Oh, Becky Jane, think of that ! No doorß at all ! And the poor thing has had to hang striped horseblankets on rings to divide the rooms off, as poor Aunty Mole, the washerwoman, fixed a bedroom for her Ike, with a quilt on a clothes’ pole.

‘The floors, dear, are all blackish, too, kind a painted, I guess, and she hasn’t got a carpet anywhere, only some dirty colored, frizzy rugs. And just think ho.v she has fixed her parlor ! She’s got the old things that have been tucked away years and years in her pa’s garret, and rubbed ’em up—the spindled-legged table and the queer old chairs, and the chest of drawers we keep the carpet rags in, and the old spinning-wheel, and—if you’ll believe it—those big blue dishes of her Grandma Fetters’ hung upon the wall.

* The only decent thing is the piano. And she’s stuck the old brass candlesticks off the kitchen chimney-piece, on that, and had a wood fire on the old dog andirons. ‘She was dressed in dirty colored green flannel, with old style puff caps on the sleeves, and a lace shoulder shawl like an old Quaker woman’s,and what looked like a pewter bar for a bosom pin ; and her hair was fastened up with a pewter screw. « She kissed me and begged me to take off my things, but all I could do was to cry. * What’s the matter, aunty ?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Letty Maria,’ I said,.‘if he’s a good Christian young man, it don’t matter in the sight of heaven, but I'm so sorry you’ve come to this ! ’ • ‘ To what ?’ she said surprised like.

‘I p’inted about, and the tears bursted out afresh. ‘ And you’ve always been used to such a nice parlor,’ said I—‘pale blue walls, and nice Notingham lace curtains, and a set in green rep, and a nice ‘Brussels carpet, and all the family photographs on the wall, and a marble-topped table, and a basket of wax fruit, and the china that your ma gave all your pa’s old clothes for one summer !’

« Poor Letty Maria shuddered, and hid her face, and cried. * Don’t mention it. I see it now.’

‘Poor Love,’ said I, ‘no matter. Your aunty has saved a little money. She’ll go out and set you something nice, such as you were brought np to.’ * But, Becky Jane, do you know she wouldn’t let me?’—said Eben wouldn’t allow it. Too proud, I suppose. And she tried to make me eat dinner with her. I was too heavy-hearted, but I sat down to please her. Becky, she hasn’t a cup or a saucer alike and it wasn’t a regular dinner. There was only sausage meat, cold chicken stew with celery in it, rolls like brickbats, and coffee with seum on it. I got away as soon as I could, and have been crying ever since. What can we do, Becky, dear, to kind a relieve her condition without hurting her pride ?’ Postscript by Letty Maria— * I have just found the rough draught of this letter in the waste paper basket: Poor Aunt Peggy ! I thought something was the matter with her. We are living in a stylish place with an elevator, and are furnished in the old style, of course. Those things from the garret are worth a forfcnne, my rugs are Persian, and my portieres Turkish. «I used my harlequin set of china, and gave dear Aunt Peggy boned turkey, chicken salad and Vienna rolls and coffee. She didn’t understand it, I see ; and the cheque for one hundred and fifty dollars that came to me from “an unknown friend.” is certainly from her, to relieve my wretched condition.’ M.K.D.