The Lady of Situations Read Free Page A

anecdote, unbeknownst to its teller, to betray the social status of the characters: the casual reference to a coachman, or even once to a footman; the use of a proper name ("As old Mrs. Astor used to put it"); the changing of the
mise en scene
to Bar Harbor or Newport.
    In the summer before her senior year at high school, however, an opportunity came to Natica for a more extended visit behind the barrier guarded by the gatehouse at Amberley. Mr. DeVoe was to be kept in town all summer by a business crisis, and his loyal wife, refusing to go without him to their seaside villa in Maine, chose, to the disgust of her daughter Edith, to pass the "dead season" of July and August in Smithport, to which her husband could comfortably commute. And Aunt Ruth, Edith's English teacher at Miss Clinton's Classes in the city, had a project for her pupil's use of this slack time which she imparted sarcastically to Natica.
    "The future is always full of surprises. Who would have thought that a girl like Edith DeVoe would ever want to soil the golden glory of her approaching debutante year with anything as sordid as college? Yet such is the case. Vassar and Smith have become the 'thing.' Or perhaps some 'radical' beau of Edith's has accused her of being a kind of a social dinosaur. At any rate the poor girl has seen the light and has asked me about her qualifications. I've told her she'd better start filling in her educational gaps if she wants to get into a decent college, even a year from now. She says she'll have nothing to do all summer, and I hinted that I had a clever niece in Smithport who might fill the bill as an English tutor. How about it, Natica? It should pay well for very little work. She asked if you were the girl who used to live in the gatehouse, and I told her you were also the girl who used to live in the big house."
    Natica knew better than to allow her eyes to express the spurt of her sudden joy. Even Aunt Ruth, she had learned, could be dishearteningly puritanical where "joys" were concerned.
    "Well, I suppose I can try. Though remembering Edith, I doubt we'll get through
Adam Bede
before Labor Day."
    Natica was very nervous on the day she bicycled up the blue drive to Amberley, but she found Mrs. DeVoe friendly and Edith tolerant, and she soon settled into an easy routine of morning lessons and family lunch. Edith had matured into a tall, dark, handsome girl with a sometimes attractive indolence of manner and a never attractive conceit. She had read almost nothing and had no use for any of the arts except as necessary preliminaries to the now fashionable world of college. But she was pleasantly pleased with her new tutor's way of abbreviating her tasks. Natica neatly summarized the plots of the novels that Edith was supposed to read and never suggested that there was anything of real importance to be gained by a study of literature. In her desire to make a friend of her pupil she even went so far as to imply that Edith needed only to add to her natural embellishments by absorbing a few capsules of classics, which might be expected, by some process of painless digestion, to make a minor contribution to the sprightliness of her social conversation.
    Edith's regular companions being largely abroad or in New England, Natica had little difficulty in making herself indispensable. She knew better than to talk about herself or her own affairs and demonstrated an insatiable appetite for details of Edith's boy friends, Edith's dresses and Edith's anticipated social triumphs. In one respect she was lucky enough to be particularly helpful, for it turned out that Edith's special beau, Roy Somers, though a son of the richest resident of Smithport, was something of a rebel.
    "Roy doesn't think like other people," Edith complained. "Everyone knows that Roosevelt's a horror and a traitor to his class, but he refuses to see it. He makes Daddy furious by touting the New Deal."
    Natica was able to educate Edith in a few of the fundamentals of