CHAPTER II

PERDITA RECALLED

Saint Louis, or that part of it which is called by dealers in real estate the choice residence section, grew westward.  And Uncle Tom might be said to have been in the vanguard of the movement.  In the days before Honora was born he had built his little house on what had been a farm on the Olive Street Road, at the crest of the second ridge from the river.  Up this ridge, with clanking traces, toiled the horse-cars that carried Uncle Tom downtown to the bank and Aunt Mary to market.

Fleeing westward, likewise, from the smoke, friends of Uncle Tom’s and Aunt Mary’s gradually surrounded them—­building, as a rule, the high Victorian mansions in favour at that period, which were placed in the centre of commodious yards.  For the friends of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary were for the most part rich, and belonged, as did they, to the older families of the city.  Mr. Dwyer’s house, with its picture gallery, was across the street.

In the midst of such imposing company the little dwelling which became the home of our heroine sat well back in a plot that might almost be called a garden.  In summer its white wooden front was nearly hidden by the quivering leaves of two tall pear trees.  On the other side of the brick walk, and near the iron fence, was an elm and a flower bed that was Uncle Tom’s pride and the admiration of the neighbourhood.  Honora has but to shut her eyes to see it aflame with tulips at Eastertide.  The eastern wall of the house was a mass of Virginia creeper, and beneath that another flower bed, and still another in the back-yard behind the lattice fence covered with cucumber vine.  There were, besides, two maples and two apricot trees, relics of the farm, and of blessed memory.  Such apricots!  Visions of hot summer evenings come back, with Uncle Tom, in his seersucker coat, with his green watering-pot, bending over the beds, and Aunt Mary seated upright in her chair, looking up from her knitting with a loving eye.

Behind the lattice, on these summer evenings, stands the militant figure of that old retainer, Bridget the cook, her stout arms akimbo, ready to engage in vigorous banter should Honora deign to approach.

“Whisht, ’Nora darlint, it’s a young lady yell be soon, and the beaux a-comin’ ’round!” she would cry, and throw back her head and laugh until the tears were in her eyes.

And the princess, a slim figure in an immaculate linen frock with red ribbons which Aunt Mary had copied from Longstreth’s London catalogue, would reply with dignity: 

“Bridget, I wish you would try to remember that my name is Honora.”

Another spasm of laughter from Bridget.

“Listen to that now!” she would cry to another ancient retainer, Mary Ann, the housemaid, whose kitchen chair was tilted up against the side of the woodshed.  “It’ll be Miss Honora next, and George Hanbury here to-day with his eye through a knothole in the fence, out of his head for a sight of ye.”