Selina: Her Hopeful Efforts and Her Livelier Failures

There must be something wrong, Lavinia, with our way of managing, said Auntie. "If you think you can do it better than I, Ann Eliza—" came from Mamma, with dignity. Selina, scant seventeen in years and sweet and loving and anxious, felt that she could not bear it. To sit in consultation thus, with her mother and her aunt because the family purse was at one of its stages of being exhausted, was desperate business enough, but to look from the face of her little mother to the countenance of her auntie under these circumstances was anguish. Negative character has been turned to positive by less, inertia forced into action, the defenceless made defender. And while the endeavors, about to be related, of this young person to add to the income of her family by her own efforts, may call to mind one Baron Munchausen lifting himself by his boot-straps, let it be borne in mind that the boot-straps may be the inconsequential thing, and that where the emphasis is to be laid is upon the good faith put into the lifting. "It seemed wise to reduce the grocery bill as far as we could," her mother was saying deprecatingly, "but in doing so, I should have considered that I was leaving myself nothing to pay Aunt Viney." She referred to the cook, faithful and efficient colored plodder. "Last month it was the iceman who was kept waiting because we paid everything to the butcher," said Selina. "Why is it," a little desperately, "there's never money enough to go around?" Her mother disliked such a display of feeling. "If you mean that in criticism of your father—" she began. Auntie interrupted. "The Wistar men have seldom been money-makers. My father in his time was the exception. I'm sure Robert has tried." Selina feeling she could not bear what she saw in these faces of her elders, looked about the room where she was sitting with them. In her time, which was twenty-five years ago, in an inland American city in a semi-southern state, bedrooms were sitting-rooms during the day. What she saw was a ponderously ornate bedstead, ponderous walnut wardrobe, washstand, bureau, fading wall-paper of a pronounced pattern, framed family photographs, and carpet resolutely tacked the four ways of the floor. She did not know the day would come when she would learn that this room with its wool lambrequin above the open grate, its wool table-cover, its wool footstools, was mid-Victorian. Still less did this loving and anxious Selina know that these two dear ladies with whom she sat, were mid-Victorian with their room, and she of the next generation, a victim to their mild inefficiencies and their gentle sentimentalities. In looking about the room, she as by instinct of the hunted, was seeking a clue to escape from her anguish of spirit. "It isn't as though your father were not giving me the same amount of money for the house as usual," her mother was saying. Mrs. Wistar always spoke a trifle precisely. "It is more that having dropped so behind with the bills, and knowing that he is worried so to give me as much as he does, I don't like to tell him so."