Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1883 — MRS. DODD'S PORTIERE. [ARTICLE]

MRS. DODD'S PORTIERE.

“I mean to have a portiere, sure’s you live,” announced Mrs. Dodd. “Lor, "what’s that?” asked Lucinda. “One of Mrs. Parloa’s new recipes? I hope it’s something goo 1.” “A portiere! child alive! Don’t you know what that is? They’s curtains, huDg up to the doors, and they sweep on the floor —and they’re worked with crewels, and yams and things! Lawyer Browne’s folks, over to Hingham, have real satin brocade ones in the best parlor, good enough for a gown. But Mrs. Kitchener, the housekeeper, she took me into her room, and there was nothing but. coffee-bagging, if you’ll believe it, with bits of colored cotton flannel sewed on ’em: and the bagging ain’t over 15 cents a yard.” “I don’t see the good of hanging curtains up to the doors; nobody can see through ’em.” “Lor, child, the door is took of, and the portiere hangs in its place, and looks mighty grand, and makes you feel as though you was living in a pal ce.” “I don’t believe itll deceive me,” sniffed Lucinda. “Do get the dictionary down, Lucinda, and look out portiere. I want to know how to spell it, and 1 all about it, and when Mrs. Jerry comes in she can’t trip me. How cut up she’ll be! You know when Brother Ben left me his best woolen carpet she wanted to know if I wasn’t afraid of moths getting into the house.” Lucinda took down the consumptivelooking dictionary and pondered over it. “I don’t believe that’s the right word,” she said presently, “there ain’t no such word nere.” “No such word! You’re just like your Aunt Jerry Dodd —always making "folks miserable. Don’t you suppose Mrs. Kitchener knows, and she living ■ this twenty year up ter Lawyer Browne’s ?” “I daresay she’s poking fun at you.” “Poking fun at me! Do you think your mother is a person cakilated to hev fun poked at her, Lucindy Dodd?” “The Duncans have got an unabridged,” said Lucinda, waiving the question; “I’ll run 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 hanging up there, and I want to tell ’em ‘a jwrtiere, to be sure;’ and I want to see’em aturning it over in their minds, dying of curiosity to know what a portiere is, but hating to give in that they never heard of the thing before!” But Mrs. Kitchener, who had been commis -ioned to buy the coffee-b igging in Hingham, happened over with it the next day, “Do you know,” said Mrs. Dodd, privately, “ we’ve hunted through the dictionary, and Lucindy’s looking in the unabridged, and we can’t find portiere, high or low?” “Of course you couldn’t,” answered Mrs. Kitchener. “Why, 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 Oldbury and Nearfield and all about to see ir, just as if it was a whole menagerie. Mrs. Jerrv’ll be just fit to die. But I don’t know what Tom’ll say 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!” he cried. “What tomfoolery is this, eh? Are you crazy, Pameley ? All the neighbors’ll be laughing at you. Hang your portiere .” “That’s just what we want to do," giggled Lucinda. “The neighbors don’t laugh at Law* yer Browne’s folks, and there’s portieres and portieres all over the house. I see ’em with my own eyes.” “And the doors took off?” gasped Tom. “Yes.” “Blest if I ever heard of such a thing! It must be modern progress! 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 Tom Dodd’s disapproval the door came off, and the portiere, brilliant with cotton-flannel dragons, Japanese young men and women, halfmoons and hieroglyphics, reigned in its etead. Mrs. Dodd 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 changing up there? and where’s your door gone?” “That? Oh, that’s only a portiere,” as if a portiei'e 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 thqy first see ’em,” tittered Lucinda. “Father didn’t. Folks have to be educated up to ’em, like eating tomatoes.” “A portiere, did you say? Where’d you get the idear ?” “It’s a French word,” said Mrs. Tom, as if French were her daily speech. “It came from France.” * “Pity it hadn’t stayed there. It must let in a sight of cold air.” “We haven’t suffered no inconvenience, ” returned Mrs. Tom, loftily. “It ain’t to be sneezed at,” said Lucinda. . As luck would have it, however, a cold snap set in about this time. Mrs. Dodd piled on the coal and shivered surreptitiously. i “ Your what-you-may-call-it don’t seem to keep out the cold like a door,” suggested Mrs. Jerry, in another of her neighborly calls. “I don’t believe they’ll be popular In Millvillage.”

“They’re popular at Lawyer Browne’s and in the first families to Hingham,” returned her sister-in-law. “Well, I s’pose they have a furnace there, and the price of coal ain’t noconseqnsnce to ’em. For my part, I S&imida’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 she succeeded; 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. “But it really does look ever so pretty,” ssid one genial soul at the sewing- circle, “ only my teeth chattered in my head all the time I stayed at Miss Dodd’s.” “Lucindy tells me it’s a new-fxngled notion they got np to Hingham; she says it’s all around there, as if it was the measles. It’s what they call ‘ Art Decoration,’ ” explained Mrs. Lutestring, the milliner. “Art fiddlesticks,” snapped Mrs. Jerry, “the art of taking cold, I reckon. Panteley had the doctor last night and a mustard plaster! I calkilate she’s decorated with a blister by this time.” “I’m afeared Miss Dodd’s getting dreadful worldly to be so took np with coffee-bagging and cotton-flannel when there’s mi sionary work to be done,” sighed old 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 our duty to get up a petition and ask her to have the door hung again, seeing’s the sewing going to meet there nest week; it wouldn’t be convenient for all of us to hev the influenzv together,” suggested the President of the society. “It’s flying in the face of Providence," persisted Mrs. Jerry. But before the week ended Aunt Hannah dropped in from Nearfield to make Mrs. Dodd a visit, as the weather had moderated. “I thought I’d take advantage of the warm spell,” she exclaimed. “You see I’m going over to Hingham next week to hev Lawyer Browne makewmy will, and I thought I’d stop awhile along with you, Pameley, on my way. You know,” she continued, dropping into a whisper as though the heirs were all at her elbow, “if I don’t jnake it—and it seems as if I was olcT enough—everything’ll go to his folks! seeing’s I’m only your aunt-in-law, having married your own uncle Rog r Hill for my first husband and my good-for-nothing cousin Tom Jackman lor my second; if I don’t make it, you see, not a dollar’d belong to yon, as I brought you up till you married Mr. Dodd! Laws is queer, you know; so I thought I wouldn’t wait no longer, but take advantage of the thaw and hev Lawyer Browne cut his folks off with a dollar. ” But the thaw was followed by another cold wave before Aunt Hannah could start for Hingham. “It won’t last long,” Mrs. Dodd consoled her, “and then Tom’ll drive you over in th^pung.” “It’s proper pleasant here,” chirruped the old lady, “and I wouldn’t grudge staying all winter, if his own folks had only been cut off. How well Ben’s woolen carpet wears, and the horsehair furniture looks so genteel. When you get my legacy—ain’t there a door open somewhere, Pameley? I’ve got cold water a-running down my back >» “Do put on this shawl, Aunt Hannah,” begged Mrs. Dodd; “I’ll stir up the fire and bring my foot-stove and a bottle of hot water; the house is old, , you see, and full of cracks. ” “When you get my legacy 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 a portiere, Aunt Hannah.” “Lor’, I heard to Nearfield that you had a portiere, and f(slks wondered what it was like, and said they hoped it wasn’t nothing catching. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it ever since I come, but the will and the cold snap put it out of my head. So that’s a portiere, eh ? Can’t you afford a door, Pameley?” > y “We took it off a-purpose,” said Lucinda; “doors ain’t anything beside portieres, nowadays.” “I’m afraid it ain’t wholesome,” said Aunt Hannah, her teeth chattering in her head, to speak figuratively. “I believe I’m coming down with one of my colds, as though she had a monopoly of them. “I hope it won’t be nothing serious till I see Lawyer Browne; his folks would laugh in their sleeves if they was to come in for all the property. I guess I’ll go to bed. ” “I’ll just slip the warming pan into your bed first, Aunt Hannah, and build a fire 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 before a fall,” Tom Dodd reflected aloud. “You paid a pretty price for your portiere, Pameley; hope you feel as though you’d got your money’s worth.” “It’s like locking the stable after the horse is stole,” remarked Lucinda when the curtain was taken down and the door replaced. “I don’t never want to hear 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.