Sylvia Of The Letters
by
Old Ab Herrick, so most people called him. Not that he was actually old; the term was an expression of liking rather than any reflection on his years. He lived in an old-fashioned house–old-fashioned, that is, for New York–on the south side of West Twentieth Street: once upon a time, but that was long ago, quite a fashionable quarter. The house, together with Mrs. Travers, had been left him by a maiden aunt. An “apartment” would, of course, have been more suitable to a bachelor of simple habits, but the situation was convenient from a journalistic point of view, and for fifteen years Abner Herrick had lived and worked there.
Then one evening, after a three days’ absence, Abner Herrick returned to West Twentieth Street, bringing with him a little girl wrapped up in a shawl, and a wooden box tied with a piece of cord. He put the box on the table; and the young lady, loosening her shawl, walked to the window and sat down facing the room.
Mrs. Travers took the box off the table and put it on the floor–it was quite a little box–and waited.
“This young lady,” explained Abner Herrick, “is Miss Ann Kavanagh, daughter of–of an old friend of mine.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Travers, and remained still expectant.
“Miss Kavanagh,” continued Abner Herrick, “will be staying with us for–” He appeared to be uncertain of the length of Miss Kavanagh’s visit. He left the sentence unfinished and took refuge in more pressing questions.
“What about the bedroom on the second floor? Is it ready? Sheets aired–all that sort of thing?”
“It can be,” replied Mrs. Travers. The tone was suggestive of judgment reserved.
“I think, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Travers, that we’d like to go to bed as soon as possible.” From force of habit Abner S. Herrick in speaking employed as a rule the editorial “we.” “We have been travelling all day and we are very tired. To-morrow morning–“
“I’d like some supper,” said Miss Kavanagh from her seat in the window, without moving.
“Of course,” agreed Miss Kavanagh’s host, with a feeble pretence that the subject had been on the tip of his tongue. As a matter of fact, he really had forgotten all about it. “We might have it up here while the room is being got ready. Perhaps a little–“
“A soft boiled egg and a glass of milk, if you please, Mrs. Travers,” interrupted Miss Kavanagh, still from her seat at the window.
“I’ll see about it,” said Mrs. Travers, and went out, taking the quite small box with her.
Such was the coming into this story of Ann Kavanagh at the age of eight years; or, as Miss Kavanagh herself would have explained, had the question been put to her, eight years and seven months, for Ann Kavanagh was a precise young lady. She was not beautiful–not then. She was much too sharp featured; the little pointed chin protruding into space to quite a dangerous extent. Her large dark eyes were her one redeeming feature. But the level brows above them were much too ready with their frown. A sallow complexion and nondescript hair deprived her of that charm of colouring on which youth can generally depend for attraction, whatever its faults of form. Nor could it truthfully be said that sweetness of disposition afforded compensation.
“A self-willed, cantankerous little imp I call her,” was Mrs. Travers’s comment, expressed after one of the many trials of strength between them, from which Miss Kavanagh had as usual emerged triumphant.
“It’s her father,” explained Abner Herrick, feeling himself unable to contradict.
“It’s unfortunate,” answered Mrs. Travers, “whatever it is.”
To Uncle Ab himself, as she had come to call him, she could on occasion be yielding and affectionate; but that, as Mrs. Travers took care to point out to her, was a small thing to her credit.