Chapter III: Mrs. Hallam’s Applicants

Several days after Mrs. Hallam’s advertisement appeared in the papers, Reginald, who had been away on business, returned, and found his aunt in her room struggling frantically with piles of letters and photographs and with a very worried and excited look on her face.

“Oh, Rex,” she cried, as he came in, “I am so glad you have come, for I am nearly wild. Only think! Seventy applicants, and as many photographs! What possessed them to send their pictures?”

Rex kept his own counsel, but gave a low whistle as he glanced at the pile which filled the table.

“Got enough for an album, haven’t you? How do they look as a whole?” he asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Such a time as I have had reading their letters, and such recommendations as most of them give of themselves, telling me what reverses of fortune they have suffered, what church they belong to, and how long they have taught in Sunday-school, and all that, as if I cared. But I have decided which to choose; her letter came this morning, with one other,—the last of the lot, I trust. I like her because she writes so plainly and sensibly and seems so truthful. She says she is not a good seamstress and that her picture flatters her, while most of the others say their pictures are not good. Then she is so respectful and simply addresses me as ‘Madam,’ while all the others _dear_ me. If there is anything I like, it is respect in a servant.”

“Thunder, auntie! You don’t call your companion a servant, do you?” Rex exclaimed, but his aunt only replied by passing him Bertha’s letter. “She writes well. How does she look?” he asked.

“Here she is.” And his aunt gave him the photograph of a short, sleepy-looking girl, with little or no expression in her face or eyes, and an unmistakable second-class air generally.

“Oh, horrors!” Rex exclaimed. “This girl never wrote that letter. Why, she simpers and squints and is positively ugly. There must be some mistake, and you have mixed things dreadfully.”

“No, I haven’t,” Mrs. Hallam persisted. “I was very careful to keep the photographs and letters together as they came. This is Bertha Leighton’s, sure, and she says it flatters her.”

“What must the original be!” Rex groaned.

His aunt continued, “I’d rather she’d be plain than good-looking. I don’t want her attracting attention and looking in the glass half the time. Mrs. Haynes always said, ‘Get plain girls by all means, in preference to pretty ones with airs and hangers-on.’”

“All right, if Mrs. Haynes says so,” Rex answered, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he put down the photograph of the girl he called Squint-Eye, and began carelessly to look at the others.

“Oh-h!” he said, catching up Bertha’s picture. “This is something like it. By Jove, she’s a stunner. Why don’t you take her? What splendid eyes she has, and how she carries herself!”

“Read her letter,” his aunt said, handing him a note in which, among other things, the writer, who gave her name as Rose Arabella Jefferson, and claimed relationship with Thomas Jefferson, Joe Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, said she was a member in good standing of the First Baptist Church, and spelled Baptist with two _b_’s. There were also other mistakes in orthography, besides some in grammar, and Rex dropped it in disgust, but held fast to the photograph, whose piquant face, bright, laughing eyes, and graceful poise of head and shoulders attracted him greatly.

“Rose Arabella Jefferson,” he began, “blood relation of Joe Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson Davis, and member in good standing in the First Baptist Church, spelled with a _b_ in the middle, you never wrote that letter, I know; and if you did, your blue blood ought to atone for a few lapses in grammar and spelling. I am sure Mrs. Walker Haynes would think so. Take her, auntie, and run the risk. She is from the country, where you said your companion must hail from, while Squint-Eye is from Boston, with no ancestry, no religion, and probably the embodiment of clubs and societies and leagues and women’s rights and Christian Science and the Lord knows what. Take Rose Arabella.”

But Mrs. Hallam was firm. Rose Arabella was quite too good-looking, and Boston was country compared with New York. “Squint-Eye” was her choice, provided her employers spoke well of her; and she asked Rex to write to Boston and make inquiries of Swartz & Co., concerning Miss Leighton.

“Not if I know myself,” Rex answered. “I will do everything reasonable, but I draw the line on turning detective and prying into any girl’s character.

He was firm on this point, and Mrs. Hallam wrote herself to Swartz & Co., and then proceeded to tear up and burn the numerous letters and photographs filling her table. Rose Arabella Jefferson, however, was not among them, for she, with other pretty girls, some personal friends and some strangers, was adorning Rex’s looking-glass, where it was greatly admired by the housemaid as Mr. Reginald’s latest fancy.

A few days later Mrs. Hallam said to Rex, “I have heard from Swartz & Co., and they speak in the highest terms of Miss Leighton. I wish you would write for me and tell her I have decided to take her, and that she is to come to me on Friday, June —, as the Teutonic sails the next morning.”

Reginald did as he was requested, thinking the while how much he would rather be writing to Rose Arabella, _Babtist_ and all, than to Bertha Leighton. But there was no help for it; Bertha was his aunt’s choice, and was to be her companion instead of his, he reflected, as he directed the letter, which he posted on his way down town. The next day he started for the West on business for the law firm, promising his aunt that if possible he would return in time to see her off; “and then,” he added, “I am going to Leicester to look after my fancy farm.”