"Peculiar!" said Martha King; "I call it something worse than peculiar to spend money that ought to go towards rent on a present for Rachel King's Anna. She gave that child a picture-book. I'm sure _I_ can't afford to go round giving children picture-books. I told her so flatly and frankly. And then it was so trying, because, right on top of my scolding, she gave me a present--a cup all painted with roses, and marked 'Friendship's Gift,' in gilt. I didn't want it; I could have shaken her," Mrs. King ended, helplessly.
It was not only Martha whose patience was tried by Miss Lydia; the experience was common to all Old Chester. Even Dr. Lavendar had felt the human impulse to shake her. When he had, very delicately, asked "as an old friend, the privilege of assisting her," it was exasperating to have a lamp-shade made of six porcelain intaglios set in a tin frame come to him the next day, with the "respectful compliments of L.S." But somehow, when, beaming at him from under her shabby bonnet, Miss Lydia had asked him if he liked that preposterous shade, he could not speak his mind,--at least to her. He spoke it mildly to Mrs. Barkley. "We must restrain her; she brought me $2 for Zenanna Missions yesterday."
"What did you do?" Mrs. Barkley said, sympathetically.
"I made her take it back. I pointed out that her first duty was to her landlord."
"Her landlord has some duties to her," Mrs. Barkley said, angrily. "The stairs are just crumbling to pieces, and that chimney is dreadful. She says that Davis said the flue would have to be rebuilt, and maybe the whole chimney. He couldn't be sure about that, but he thought it probable. He said it would cost $100 to put all the things in repair--floor and roof and everything. But he would do it for $85, considering. He thinks the flue has broken down inside somehow. She might burn up some night; and then," said Mrs. Barkley, in a deep bass, "how would that Smith person feel?"
"He says," Dr. Lavendar explained, "that by the terms of the lease the tenant is to make repairs."
Mrs. Barkley snorted. "And how is poor Lydia to make repairs? She hasn't two cents to bless herself with. I told him so."
Mrs. Barkley's face grew very red at the recollection of her interview with Mr. Smith (he was one of the new Smiths, of course). "I don't mix philanthropy and business," he had said; "the lease says the tenant shall make repairs. And, besides, I do not wish to be more attractive than I am. With that chimney, some other landlord may win her affections. Without it, she will never desert Mr. Micawber."