Mrs. Dodd's Portiere

'I m9an to have a portiere, sure's you live,' anounced Mrs. Dodd. 'Lor, what's that?' asked Lucinda. 'One oL Mrs. Parloa's new recipes ' I hope it's something good.' 'Aportierel child alive! 'Don't you know what that is? They's curt.ains, hung up to the doors, and they sweep on the iloor - and they're worked w ith crewels, and yarns and things! Lawy er Browne's folks, over to Hinghatu, have real satin brocade ones in the best pai lor, good enough Lor a gown. But Mrs. Kitchener the housekeeper, she took tne into her room, and there they was nothing but coffee-bagging if you'll believe it, with bits oL collored cotton iiannel sewed on 'em; and the bagging ain't over flfteen cents a yard.' 'I don't see the good of hanging curtains ip to the doors; nobody can see through 'em.' 'Lor, child, the door is took off, and the portiere nanga in its place, and looks niighty grand, and makes you feel as though you was living in a palace.' 'í don't believe it'll deceive me,' sniffed Lucinda. 'Do get the dictionary down, Lucfcady, and look out portiere. I want to know how to spell it, and all about it, and wheii Mrs. Jerry comes in she can't trip me. How cut up she'll be! You know when brother Ben left me Ms best woolen carpet she wanted to kno w if I wasn't afraid of moths getting into the house.' Lucinda took down the consuniptivelooking dietionary and pondered over it. 'I don't believe that's the right word,' she said presently; 'tiiere ain't no such word here.' 'No such word! You're just likeyour Aunt Jerry Dodd, - always making folks miserable. Don't you suppose Mrs. Kitchener knows, and she living this twenty years up ter Lawyer Browne's?' I daresay she's poking f un at you.' 'Poking fun at me! Do you think your mother is a person calkilated to hev fun poked at lier, Lucindy Dodd ?' The Duncans have got an unabridged,' said Lucinda, waving the question, Til go over and hunt it up.' 'But don't let on what you're looking after. I want the neighbors to come in and ask what I've got a-hanglng up there, and I want to teil 'em a 'portiere, to be sure ;' and I want to see 'em aturning it over in their miuds, dying of curiosity to know what a portiereis, but hating to give in that they never heard of the thing betore.' But Mrs. Kitchener, who had been commissioned to buy the coffee-bagging in Hingman, happened over with it the next day. Do you know,' said Mrs. Dodd, privately, 'we've hunted through the dictionary, and Lucindy's looked in the unabridged, and we can't flnd portiere high or low.' 'Of cóurse you couldn't,' answered Mis. Kitchener. 'VVhy, it's a French word!' 'A French word ! repeated Mrs. Dodd. 'A real French word ! You don't say so ! Why folks'll come from Oldburv, and Nearfield, and all about to see it, just as if it was a whole menagerie. Mrc. Jerry'll be just fit to die. But I don't know what Tom'll Lay about taking the door off the hinges.' 'I guess he'll talk French,' put in Lucinda. And he did. 'Take the door off the hinges 1' he cried. 'What tom-foolery is this, eh? Are you crazy, Pamely ? All the neighbors'll be laughing at you. Hang the portiere.' Tliat's just what we want to do" giggled Lucinda. 'Xlie neighbors don't laugh at Lawyer Browne's folks, and there's portieres and portieres all over the house. I see 'em with my own eyes.' 'And all the doors took off?' gasped Torn. 'Yes.' 'Blessed if I ever heard of such a thing ! It must be modern progresa ! Why not take down a side of the house and hang up a curtain? What's it for, any way ? It ain't pretty ; it looks like a horse-blanket. It'll be mighty nice for rheumatism and influenzy. Why not take the roof off the house, instead ?' But for all Torn Dodd's disapproval the door came off, and the portiere, brilliant with cotton-flannel dragon, .Tapanese young men and women, halfmoons and hieroglyphics, resigned in its stead. Mrs. Dood was ready for the neighbors. 'Mercy sakes alive!' ejaculated Mrs. Jerry, who had come in with her darning for a little gossip. 'What on earth have you got hanging up there? and where's your door gone ?' 'That? Oh, that's only a portiere.' as if a portiere in Millvillage was the most common thing in the world. 'A what! It looks like a side-show at the circus, or a poster.' 'Everybody don't take to 'em when they first see 'em,' tittered Lucinda 'Father didn't. Folks have to be edu cated up to 'em, like eating tomatoes 'A portiere, did you say ? Where' y ou get the i deer?' 'It's a Freneh word,' said Mrs. Tom as if Freneh were her daily speech. 'Í carne f rom France.' 'Rty it hadn't stayed there. I must iet in a sight of cold air.' 'We haven't sulïered no inconvenience,' returned Mrs. Tom, loftily. 'It ain't to be sneezed at,' said Lucinda. As luck would have it, however, a eold snap set in about this time. Mrs. Dood piled on the coal and shivered surreptitiously. 'Your what-you-may-call-it don't seem to keep out the cold Üke a door,' suggested Mrs. Jerry in another of her neighborly calis. 'I don't believe they'll be popular in Millvillage.' 'They're popular at Lawyer Browne's and in the flrst families to Hingham,' returned her sister-in law. 'Well, I s'pose they have a furnace there, and the price of coal ain't no consequence to 'em. For my part, I shouldn't be able to reconcile it to my conscience to waste Jerry's substance in a portiere.' If Mrs. Dodd had wished to set the neighborhood agog shesucceeded, Millvillage wasn't used to esthetic ideas, and the report that she had taken a door off the hinges and hung up a curtain in its stead seemed to their unenlightened minds the height of absurdity. 'Bat itreally does look ever sopretty,' said ose genial soul at the sewing circJe, 'only my teeth chattered in my head all the time I stayed at Miss Dood's.' 'Lucindy tells me it's a new-fangled notion they got up to Hinghara; she says it's all around there. as if it was the measles. It's what they cali 'Art Decoration,' explained Mrs. Lutestring the milliner. 'Art fiddlesticks," snapped Mrs. Jerry, 'the art of taking cold, I reckon. Pameley had the doctor last night and a mustard piaster! I calkilate she's decorated with a blister by this time.' 'l'm afeared Miss Dodd's getting dreadful worldly to be so took up with coffee-baggiiiff aüd cotton-flannel when tíhere's niissionary work to be done,' sighed oíd Mrs. Preacher. 'Miss Dodd's got gentility on the brain,' put in the village dressmaker. 'She wants to lead the fashions in Millvillage.' 'I think it's ourduly get to up a petition and ask her to hev the door hung iigain, seeing's the sewing society's going te meet there next week; it wouldn't e convenient, for all of us to hev the nfluenzy together,' suggested thepresient et' the society. 'It's flying in the face of Providence,' ersisted Mrs. Jeiry. But before the Week ended Aunt Iannah dropped in from Nearfleld to make Mrs. Dodd a visit, as the weather had moderated. 'I thought I'd take alvantage of the warm speil," she exclaimed. 'You see 'm going over to Ilingham next week 0 hev Lawyer Browne auke my will, and I thought I'd stop awhile along with you, Pameley, on my way. You inow,' she continued, dropping into a vhisper as though the heirs were all at her elbow, 'if I don't make ie - and it eems as if I was old enough - everyhing'll go to his folks! seeing's I'mony your aunt-in-law, having married 'our own unele Roger Hill for my first ïusband and my good-f or-nothing cousin 'Oin Jackman for my second; if L don't make it, you see, not a dollar'd belong ;o you, as I brought you up till you married Mr. Dodd! Laws is queer, you cnow; so I thought I wouldn't wait no onger, but take advantage of the thaw nd hev Lawyer Browne cut his folks ff with a dollar.' But the thaw was followed by anther cold wave before A unt Hannah ould start for Ilingham. 'It won't last long,' Mrs. Dodd conoled her, 'and then To: .'11 drive you ver in the pung.' 'It's proper pleasant ht re,' chirruped ,he old lady, 'and I wor.ldn't grudge taying all winter, if his i' lks had only been cut off. How well Ben's woolen arpet wears, and the horse hair f umiure looks so genteel. When you get my legacy - ain't there a door open omewhere, Pameley? l've got cold water a-running down my back' - Do put on this shawl, Aunt Hannah,' begged Mrs. Dodd; Til stir up the fire and bring my foot-stove and a bottle of hot water; the house is old, you see, and f uil of cracks.' 'When you get my legaoy you can have a new one, Pameley. What have you got that counterpane hanging up to the doorway for ? To keep out the air?' 'That's nportiere, Aunt Hannah.' 'Lor,' I heard up to Nearfield that you had a partiere and folks wondererl what it was like, and said they hoped it wasn't nothing catching; l've been meaning to ask you about it ever since 1 come, but the will and the cold snap put it out of my head. So that's a por tiere, eh? Can't you afford a door, Pameley ?' 'We took it off a-purpose,' said Lucinda; 'doors ain't anything besidejortieres, now-a-days.' 'I'm afraid it ain't wholesome,' said Aunt Hannah, her teeth chattering in her head, to speak flguratively. 'I believe I'm coming down with one of inv colds.'as though she liad a monopoly of them. 'I hope it won't be nothing serious till I see Lawyer TJrowne; his folks would laugh in their sleeves if they was to come in for all the property. I guess I'il go to bed.' '111 just slip the warming-pan into your bed first, A unt Hannah, and build a üre in your room and put some pennyroyal to steep. You don't feel feverish, do you?' But poor Aunt Hannah never reached Hingham, and the will was never made. 'Pride goes bef ore a f all,' Torn Dodd reflected aloud. 'You paid a pretty price for your portiere, Pameley; hope you feel as though you'd got your naoney's worth.' 'It's like locking stable af ter the horse is stole,' remarked Lucinda when the curtain was takeu down and the door replaced. 'I don't never want tohear the name again, Lucinda Dodd; don't. talk to me of portieres,' said her mother; 'they oughtn't never to have been invented.' - Our Continent.