Leave Well Enough Alone by Rosemary Wells Page A

whole floor of the living room. The wood of the baby grand piano that stood in the corner seemed as soft as silk. The finish looked like honey in a jar. “What an elegant room,” she added, guessing right then that nifty and elegant were a poor choice of words. “I just haven’t ever been in a house like this, as big as this with all these things....
    Mrs. Hoade chuckled. “I’m sure your house in Newburgh is lovely and homey,” she said. “The humblest hearth if it is tended with love is worth all the palaces of the tsars, or is it kings? At any rate, the sentiment is the same.”
    “Oh, I know,” said Dorothy earnestly. “It’s just that you could fit three of my house into this one house!” She spread her arms to indicate the immensity she observed and knocked a small glass owl to the floor. Its ear broke off.
    “It’s all right!” said Mrs. Hoade, rushing over to pick up the owl.
    “I’ll pay for it!” said Dorothy. “Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry. I’m so clumsy. I’ll pay for it, Mrs. Hoade. I promise!” Dorothy discovered she had begun to cry.
    “Please,” said Mrs. Hoade. “It’s only a doodad. You couldn’t possibly pay for it anyway,” she said with a laugh. “It’s Steuben glass. Over twelve hundred dollars. Now you couldn’t do that, so let’s just call it an accident. Dinna shouldn’t have put it so near the edge of the table when she dusted, anyway.”
    “I’ll pay for it, Mrs. Hoade. I’ll pay for it anyway. My mother would make me,” Dorothy gasped.
    “Now listen,” Mrs. Hoade broke in. She was still kneeling on the floor next to Dorothy. She put the owl and the ear on the table, and pulled Dorothy’s trembling hand away from Dorothy’s mouth. “Now listen to me, Dorothy.” Mrs. Hoade said evenly. “It would take you three summers of work to pay for one silly piece of glass. Now I know exactly how you feel. I sympathize. Do you think I always had this kind of money? Believe me, I didn’t. Now listen to this carefully because it’s very important.”
    “Okay,” said Dorothy shakily.
    “I hated that owl. Here’s a Kleenex. I certainly would never spend twelve hundred dollars on an owl. I even hate real owls. Now come. We’ll change the subject. I’ll show you some lovely pictures.”
    “All right,” Dorothy agreed.
    Mrs. Hoade pointed to a photograph on one of the tables. “That’s how the house and grounds used to look,” she said, “years ago before the stable was torn down. There used to be a stable and a greenhouse, and God knows why they tore them down. Fire hazards, I guess. Too much to keep up. See the stable at the back of that picture?”
    “What are those?” Dorothy asked, picking up the photograph.
    “Oh. Fishponds. They were filled in too. The fountains were put up recently.” Dorothy thought she preferred the place as it had been before. A stable! She would have loved to have ridden a horse. The little cupids that held two jugs aloft in the middle of the fishponds certainly looked nicer than the chrome fountains. They went perfectly with the primroses, too.
    “That was my father,” said Mrs. Hoade, picking up another framed photograph.
    “Who is that?” Dorothy asked, noticing a portrait of a woman, done in oils, hanging over a silver liquor tray at the bottom of the stairs.
    “That’s Lisa’s and Jenny’s great-grandmother—of course, when she was young,” said Mrs. Hoade.
    “People really dressed that way!” said Dorothy. “Look at that gorgeous dress!”
    “Very impractical, if you ask me.” Mrs. Hoade used a snippy tone that reminded Dorothy of Maureen.
    Dorothy tried to remember the name of the painter whose style had been adopted for the portrait. Sister Elizabeth wanted her students to know about painters and styles. Gainsborough, that was it. The woman looked positively regal in her long flowing dress. There was something there that brought to mind Mother Superior. Certainly it wasn’t the scarlet dress, not the