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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Turn About Eleanor, by Ethel M. Kelley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Turn About Eleanor
+
+Author: Ethel M. Kelley
+
+Illustrator: F. Graham Cootes
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2009 [EBook #28444]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURN ABOUT ELEANOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TURN ABOUT ELEANOR
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Eleanor]
+
+
+
+
+Turn About Eleanor
+
+By
+
+ETHEL M. KELLEY
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+F. GRAHAM COOTES
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1917
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+PRESS OF
+
+BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+
+BROOKLYN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+
+       I  Enter Eleanor                                              1
+
+      II  The Cooperative Parents                                   14
+
+     III  The Experiment Begins                                     27
+
+      IV  Peter Elucidates                                          40
+
+       V  Eleanor Enjoys Herself in Her Own Way                     48
+
+      VI  Jimmie Becomes a Parent                                   63
+
+     VII  One Descent into Bohemia                                  72
+
+    VIII  The Ten Hutchinsons                                       84
+
+      IX  Peter                                                    101
+
+       X  The Omniscient Focus                                     113
+
+      XI  Gertrude Has Trouble with Her Behavior                   124
+
+     XII  Madam Bolling                                            138
+
+    XIII  Brook and River                                          158
+
+     XIV  Merry Christmas                                          167
+
+      XV  Growing Up                                               181
+
+     XVI  Margaret Louisa's Birthright                             195
+
+    XVII  A Real Kiss                                              203
+
+   XVIII  Beulah's Problem                                         219
+
+     XIX  Mostly Uncle Peter                                       234
+
+      XX  The Makings of a Triple Wedding                          251
+
+     XXI  Eleanor Hears the News                                   261
+
+    XXII  The Search                                               271
+
+   XXIII  The Young Nurse                                          281
+
+    XXIV  Christmas Again                                          292
+
+     XXV  The Lover                                                304
+
+
+
+
+TURN ABOUT ELEANOR
+
+
+
+
+TURN ABOUT ELEANOR
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ENTER ELEANOR
+
+
+A child in a faded tam-o'-shanter that had once been baby blue, and a
+shoddy coat of a glaring, unpropitious newness, was sitting
+uncomfortably on the edge of a hansom seat, and gazing soberly out at
+the traffic of Fifth Avenue.
+
+The young man beside her, a blond, sleek, narrow-headed youth in
+eye-glasses, was literally making conversation with her. That is, he
+was engaged in a palpable effort to make conversation--to manufacture
+out of the thin crisp air of that November morning and the random
+impressions of their progress up the Avenue, something with a general
+resemblance to tete-a-tete dialogue as he understood it. He was
+succeeding only indifferently.
+
+"See, Eleanor," he pointed brightly with his stick to the flower shop
+they were passing, "see that building with the red roof, and all
+those window boxes. Don't you think those little trees in pots outside
+look like Christmas trees? Sometimes when your Aunts Beulah and
+Margaret and Gertrude, whom you haven't met yet--though you are on
+your way to meet them, you know--sometimes when they have been very
+good, almost good enough to deserve it, I stop by that little flower
+shop and buy a chaste half dozen of gardenias and their accessories,
+and divide them among the three."
+
+"Do you?" the child asked, without wistfulness. She was a good child,
+David Bolling decided,--a sporting child, willing evidently to play
+when it was her turn, even when she didn't understand the game at all.
+It was certainly a new kind of game that she would be so soon expected
+to play her part in,--a rather serious kind of game, if you chose to
+look at it that way.
+
+David himself hardly knew how to look at it. He was naturally a
+conservative young man, who had been brought up by his mother to
+behave as simply as possible on all occasions, and to avoid the
+conspicuous as tacitly and tactfully as one avoids a new disease germ.
+His native point of view, however, had been somewhat deflected by his
+associations. His intimate circle consisted of a set of people who
+indorsed his mother's decalogue only under protest, and with the most
+stringent reservations. That is, they were young and healthy, and
+somewhat overcharged with animal spirits, and their reactions were all
+very intense and emphatic.
+
+He was trying at this instant to look rather more as if he were likely
+to meet one of his own friends than one of his mother's. His mother's
+friends would not have understood his personal chaperonage of the
+shabby little girl at his elbow. Her hair was not even properly
+brushed. It looked frazzled and tangled; and at the corner of one of
+her big blue eyes, streaking diagonally across the pallor in which it
+was set, was a line of dirt,--a tear mark, it might have been, though
+that didn't make the general effect any less untidy, David thought;
+only a trifle more uncomfortably pathetic. She was a nice little girl,
+that fact was becoming more and more apparent to David, but any friend
+of his mother's would have wondered, and expressed him or herself as
+wondering, why in the name of all sensitiveness he had not taken a
+taxicab, or at least something in the nature of a closed vehicle, if
+he felt himself bound to deliver in person this curious little
+stranger to whatever mysterious destination she was for.
+
+"I thought you'd like a hansom, Eleanor, better than a taxi-cab,
+because you can see more. You've never been in this part of New York
+before, I understand."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You came up from Colhassett last Saturday, didn't you? Mrs. O'Farrel
+wrote to your grandmother to send you on to us, and you took the
+Saturday night boat from Fall River."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Did you travel alone, Eleanor?"
+
+"A friend of Grandpa's came up on the train with me, and left me on
+the vessel. He told the colored lady and gentleman to see if I was all
+right,--Mr. Porter and Mrs. Steward."
+
+"And were you all right?" David's eyes twinkled.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Not sea sick, nor homesick?"
+
+The child's fine-featured face quivered for a second, then set again
+into impassive stoic lines, and left David wondering whether he had
+witnessed a vibration of real emotion, or the spasmodic twitching of
+the muscles that is so characteristic of the rural public school.
+
+"I wasn't sea sick."
+
+"Tell me about your grandparents, Eleanor." Then as she did not
+respond, he repeated a little sharply, "Tell me about your
+grandparents, won't you?"
+
+The child still hesitated. David bowed to the wife of a Standard Oil
+director in a passing limousine, and one of the season's prettiest
+debutantes, who was walking; and because he was only twenty-four, and
+his mother was very, very ambitious for him, he wondered if the tear
+smudge on the face of his companion had been evident from the
+sidewalk, and decided that it must have been.
+
+"I don't know how to tell," the child said at last, "I don't know what
+you want me to say."
+
+"I don't want you to say anything in particular, just in general, you
+know."
+
+David stuck. The violet eyes were widening with misery, there was no
+doubt about it. "Game, clean through," he said to himself. Aloud he
+continued. "Well, you know, Eleanor.--Never say 'Well,' if you can
+possibly avoid it, because it's a flagrant Americanism, and when you
+travel in foreign parts you're sure to regret it,--well, you know, if
+you are to be in a measure my ward--and you are, my dear, as well as
+the ward of your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude, and your
+Uncles Jimmie and Peter--I ought to begin by knowing a little
+something of your antecedents. That is why I suggested that you tell
+me about your grandparents. I don't care what you tell me, but I think
+it would be very suitable for you to tell me something. Are they
+native Cape Codders? I'm a New Englander myself, you know, so you may
+be perfectly frank with me."
+
+"They're not summer folks," the child said. "They just live in
+Colhassett all the year round. They live in a big white house on the
+depot road, but they're so old now, they can't keep it up. If it was
+painted it would be a real pretty house."
+
+"Your grandparents are not very well off then?"
+
+The child colored. "They've got lots of things," she said, "that
+Grandfather brought home when he went to sea, but it was Uncle Amos
+that sent them the money they lived on. When he died they didn't have
+any."
+
+"How long has he been dead?"
+
+"Two years ago Christmas."
+
+"You must have had some money since then."
+
+"Not since Uncle Amos died, except for the rent of the barn, and the
+pasture land, and a few things like that."
+
+"You must have had money put away."
+
+"No," the little girl answered. "We didn't. We didn't have any money,
+except what came in the way I said. We sold some old-fashioned dishes,
+and a little bit of cranberry bog for twenty-five dollars. We didn't
+have any other money."
+
+"But you must have had something to live on. You can't make bricks
+without straw, or grow little girls up without nourishing food in
+their tummies." He caught an unexpected flicker of an eyelash, and
+realized for the first time that the child was acutely aware of every
+word he was saying, that even his use of English was registering a
+poignant impression on her consciousness. The thought strangely
+embarrassed him. "We say tummies in New York, Eleanor," he explained
+hastily. "It's done here. The New England stomick, however, is almost
+entirely obsolete. You'll really get on better in the circles to which
+you are so soon to be accustomed if you refer to it in my own simple
+fashion;--but to return to our muttons, Eleanor, which is French for
+getting down to cases, again, you must have had something to live on
+after your uncle died. You are alive now. That would almost seem to
+prove my contention."
+
+"We didn't have any money, but what I earned."
+
+"But--what you earned. What do you mean, Eleanor?"
+
+The child's face turned crimson, then white again. This time there was
+no mistaking the wave of sensitive emotion that swept over it.
+
+"I worked out," she said. "I made a dollar and a half a week running
+errands, and taking care of a sick lady vacations, and nights after
+school. Grandma had that shock, and Grandpa's back troubled him. He
+tried to get work but he couldn't. He did all he could taking care of
+Grandma, and tending the garden. They hated to have me work out, but
+there was nobody else to."
+
+"A family of three can't live on a dollar and a half a week."
+
+"Yes, sir, they can, if they manage."
+
+"Where were your neighbors all this time, Eleanor? You don't mean to
+tell me that the good, kindly people of Cape Cod would have stood by
+and let a little girl like you support a family alone and unaided.
+It's preposterous."
+
+"The neighbors didn't know. They thought Uncle Amos left us something.
+Lots of Cape Cod children work out. They thought that I did it because
+I wanted to."
+
+"I see," said David gravely.
+
+The wheel of their cab became entangled in that of a smart delivery
+wagon. He watched it thoughtfully. Then he took off his glasses, and
+polished them.
+
+"Through a glass darkly," he explained a little thickly. He was really
+a very _young_ young man, and once below the surface of what he was
+pleased to believe a very worldly and cynical manner, he had a
+profound depth of tenderness and human sympathy.
+
+Then as they jogged on through the Fifty-ninth Street end of the Park,
+looking strangely seared and bereft from the first blight of the
+frost, he turned to her again. This time his tone was as serious as
+her own.
+
+"Why did you stop working out, Eleanor?" he asked.
+
+"The lady I was tending died. There wasn't nobody else who wanted me.
+Mrs. O'Farrel was a relation of hers, and when she came to the
+funeral, I told her that I wanted to get work in New York if I
+could,--and then last week she wrote me that the best she could do was
+to get me this place to be adopted, and so--I came."
+
+"But your grandparents?" David asked, and realized almost as he spoke
+that he had his finger on the spring of the tragedy.
+
+"They had to take help from the town."
+
+The child made a brave struggle with her tears, and David looked away
+quickly. He knew something of the temper of the steel of the New
+England nature; the fierce and terrible pride that is bred in the bone
+of the race. He knew that the child before him had tasted of the
+bitter waters of humiliation in seeing her kindred "helped" by the
+town. "Going out to work," he understood, had brought the family pride
+low, but taking help from the town had leveled it to the dust.
+
+"There is, you know, a small salary that goes with this being adopted
+business," he remarked casually a few seconds later. "Your Aunts
+Gertrude and Beulah and Margaret, and your three stalwart uncles
+aforesaid, are not the kind of people who have been brought up to
+expect something for nothing. They don't expect to adopt a perfectly
+good orphan without money and without price, merely for the privilege
+of experimentation. No, indeed, an orphan in good standing of the best
+New England extraction ought to exact for her services a salary of at
+least fifteen dollars a month. I wouldn't consent to take a cent less,
+Eleanor."
+
+"Wouldn't you?" the child asked uncertainly. She sat suddenly erect,
+as if an actual burden had been dropped from her shoulders. Her eyes
+were not violet, David decided, he had been deceived by the depth of
+their coloring; they were blue, Mediterranean blue, and her lashes
+were an inch and a half long at the very least. She was not only
+pretty, she was going to be beautiful some day. A strange premonition
+struck David of a future in which this long-lashed, stoic baby was in
+some way inextricably bound.
+
+"How old are you?" he asked her abruptly.
+
+"Ten years old day before yesterday."
+
+They had been making their way through the Park; the searer, yellower
+Park of late November. It looked duller and more cheerless than David
+ever remembered it. The leaves rattled on the trees, and the sun went
+down suddenly.
+
+"This is Central Park," he said. "In the spring it's very beautiful
+here, and all the people you know go motoring or driving in the
+afternoon."
+
+He bowed to his mother's milliner in a little French runabout. The
+Frenchman stared frankly at the baby blue tam-o'-shanter and the
+tangled golden head it surmounted.
+
+"Joseph could make you a peachy tam-o'-shanter looking thing of blue
+velvet; I'll bet I could draw him a picture to copy. Your Uncle David,
+you know, is an artist of a sort."
+
+For the first time since their incongruous association began the child
+met his smile; her face relaxed ever so little, and the lips quivered,
+but she smiled a shy, little dawning smile. There was trust in it and
+confidence. David put out his hand to pat hers, but thought better of
+it.
+
+"Eleanor," he said, "my mother knows our only living Ex-president, and
+the Countess of Warwick, one Vanderbilt, two Astors, and she's met Sir
+Gilbert Parker, and Rudyard Kipling. She also knows many of the stars
+and satellites of upper Fifth Avenue. She has, as well, family
+connections of so much weight and stolidity that their very approach,
+singly or in conjunction, shakes the earth underneath them.--I wish we
+could meet them all, Eleanor, every blessed one of them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COOPERATIVE PARENTS
+
+
+"I wonder how a place like this apartment will look to her," Beulah
+said thoughtfully. "I wonder if it will seem elegant, or cramped to
+death. I wonder if she will take to it kindly, or with an ill
+concealed contempt for its limitations."
+
+"The poor little thing will probably be so frightened and homesick by
+the time David gets her here, that she won't know what kind of a place
+she's arrived at," Gertrude suggested. "Oh, I wouldn't be in your
+shoes for the next few days for anything in the world, Beulah Page;
+would you, Margaret?"
+
+The third girl in the group smiled.
+
+"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "It would be rather fun to
+begin it."
+
+"I'd rather have her for the first two months, and get it over with,"
+Beulah said decisively. "It'll be hanging over your head long after my
+ordeal is over, and by the time I have to have her again she'll be
+absolutely in training. You don't come until the fifth on the list you
+know, Gertrude. Jimmie has her after me, then Margaret, then Peter,
+and you, and David, if he has got up the courage to tell his mother
+by that time."
+
+"But if he hasn't," Gertrude suggested.
+
+"He can work it out for himself. He's got to take the child two months
+like the rest of us. He's agreed to."
+
+"He will," Margaret said, "I've never known him to go back on his word
+yet."
+
+"Trust Margaret to stick up for David. Anyway, I've taken the
+precaution to put it in writing, as you know, and the document is
+filed."
+
+"We're not adopting this infant legally."
+
+"No, Gertrude, we can't,--yet, but morally we are. She isn't an
+infant, she's ten years old. I wish you girls would take the matter a
+little more seriously. We've bound ourselves to be responsible for
+this child's whole future. We have undertaken her moral, social and
+religious education. Her body and soul are to be--"
+
+"Equally divided among us," Gertrude cut in.
+
+Beulah scorned the interruption.
+
+"--held sacredly in trust by the six of us, severally and
+collectively."
+
+"Why haven't we adopted her legally then?" Margaret asked.
+
+"Well, you see, there are practical objections. You have to be a
+corporation or an institution or something, to adopt a child as a
+group. A child can't have three sets of parents in the eyes of the
+law, especially when none of them is married, or have the least
+intention of being married, to each other.--I don't see what you want
+to keep laughing at, Gertrude. It's all a little unusual and modern
+and that sort of thing, but I don't think it's funny. Do you,
+Margaret?"
+
+"I think that it's funny, but I think that it's serious, too,
+Beulah."
+
+"I don't see what's funny about--" Beulah began hotly.
+
+"You don't see what's funny about anything,--even Rogers College, do
+you, darling? It is funny though for the bunch of us to undertake the
+upbringing of a child ten years old; to make ourselves financially and
+spiritually responsible for it. It's a lot more than funny, I know,
+but it doesn't seem to me as if I could go on with it at all, until
+somebody was willing to admit what a _scream_ the whole thing is."
+
+"We'll admit that, if that's all you want, won't we, Beulah?" Margaret
+appealed.
+
+"If I've got this insatiable sense of humor, let's indulge it by all
+means," Gertrude laughed. "Go on, chillun, go on, I'll try to be good
+now."
+
+"I wish you would," Margaret said. "Confine yourself to a syncopated
+chortle while I get a few facts out of Beulah. I did most of my voting
+on this proposition by proxy, while I was having the measles in
+quarantine. Beulah, did I understand you to say you got hold of your
+victim through Mrs. O'Farrel, your seamstress?"
+
+"Yes, when we decided we'd do this, we thought we'd get a child about
+six. We couldn't have her any younger, because there would be bottles,
+and expert feeding, and well, you know, all those things. We couldn't
+have done it, especially the boys. We thought six would be just about
+the right age, but we simply couldn't find a child that would do. We
+had to know about its antecedents. We looked through the orphan
+asylums, but there wasn't anything pure-blooded American that we could
+be sure of. We were all agreed that we wanted pure American blood. I
+knew Mrs. O'Farrel had relatives on Cape Cod. You know what that stock
+is, a good sea-faring strain, and a race of wonderfully fine women,
+'atavistic aristocrats' I remember an author in the _Atlantic Monthly_
+called them once. I suppose you think it's funny to groan, Gertrude,
+when anybody makes a literary allusion, but it isn't. Well, anyway,
+Mrs. O'Farrel knew about this child, and sent for her. She stayed with
+Mrs. O'Farrel over Sunday, and now David is bringing her here. She'll
+be here in a minute."
+
+"Why David?" Gertrude twinkled.
+
+"Why not David?" Beulah retorted. "It will be a good experience for
+him, besides David is so amusing when he tries to be, I thought he
+could divert her on the way."
+
+"It isn't such a crazy idea, after all, Gertrude." Margaret Hutchinson
+was the youngest of the three, being within several months of her
+majority, but she looked older. Her face had that look of wisdom that
+comes to the young who have suffered physical pain. "We've got to do
+something. We're all too full of energy and spirits, at least the rest
+of you are, and I'm getting huskier every minute, to twirl our hands
+and do nothing. None of us ever wants to be married,--that's settled;
+but we do want to be useful. We're a united group of the closest kind
+of friends, bound by the ties of--of--natural selection, and we need a
+purpose in life. Gertrude's a real artist, but the rest of us are not,
+and--and--"
+
+"What could be more natural for us than to want the living clay to
+work on? That's the idea, isn't it?" Gertrude said. "I can be serious
+if I want to, Beulah-land, but, honestly, girls, when I come to face
+out the proposition, I'm almost afraid to. What'll I do with that
+child when it comes to be my turn? What'll Jimmie do? Buy her a string
+of pearls, and show her the night life of New York very likely. How'll
+I break it to my mother? That's the cheerful little echo in my
+thoughts night and day. How did you break it to yours, Beulah?"
+
+Beulah flushed. Her serious brown eyes, deep brown with wine-colored
+lights in them, met those of each of her friends in turn. Then she
+laughed.
+
+"Well, I do know this is funny," she said, "but, you know, I haven't
+dared tell her. She'll be away for a month, anyway. Aunt Ann is here,
+but I'm only telling her that I'm having a little girl from the
+country to visit me."
+
+Occasionally the architect of an apartment on the upper west side of
+New York--by pure accident, it would seem, since the general run of
+such apartments is so uncomfortable, and unfriendly--hits upon a plan
+for a group of rooms that are at once graciously proportioned and
+charmingly convenient, while not being an absolute offense to the eye
+in respect to the details of their decoration. Beulah Page and her
+mother lived in such an apartment, and they had managed with a few
+ancestral household gods, and a good many carefully related modern
+additions to them, to make of their eight rooms and bath, to say
+nothing of the ubiquitous butler's-pantry, something very remarkably
+resembling a home, in its most delightful connotation: and it was in
+the drawing room of this home that the three girls were gathered.
+
+Beulah, the younger daughter of a widowed mother--now visiting in the
+home of the elder daughter, Beulah's sister Agatha, in the expectation
+of what the Victorians refer to as an "interesting event"--was
+technically under the chaperonage of her Aunt Ann, a solemn little
+spinster with no control whatever over the movements of her determined
+young niece.
+
+Beulah was just out of college,--just out, in fact, of the most
+high-minded of all the colleges for women;--that founded by Andrew
+Rogers in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one. There
+is probably a greater percentage of purposeful young women graduated
+from Rogers College every year, than from any other one of the
+communities of learning devoted to the education of women; and of all
+the purposeful classes turned out from that admirable institution,
+Beulah's class could without exaggeration be designated as the most
+purposeful class of them all. That Beulah was not the most purposeful
+member of her class merely argues that an almost abnormally high
+standard of purposefulness was maintained by practically every
+individual in it.
+
+At Rogers every graduating class has its fad; its propaganda for a
+crusade against the most startling evils of the world. One year, the
+sacred outlines of the human figure are protected against
+disfigurement by an ardent group of young classicists in Grecian
+draperies. The next, a fierce young brood of vegetarians challenge a
+lethargic world to mortal combat over an Argentine sirloin. The year
+of Beulah's graduation, the new theories of child culture that were
+gaining serious headway in academic circles, had filtered into the
+class rooms, and Beulah's mates had contracted the contagion
+instantly. The entire senior class went mad on the subject of child
+psychology and the various scientific prescriptions for the direction
+of the young idea.
+
+It was therefore primarily to Beulah Page, that little Eleanor Hamlin,
+of Colhassett, Massachusetts, owed the change in her fortune. At least
+it was to Beulah that she owed the initial inspiration that set the
+wheel of that fortune in motion; but it was to the glorious enterprise
+and idealism of youth, and the courage of a set of the most intrepid
+and quixotic convictions that ever quickened in the breasts of a mad
+half dozen youngsters, that she owed the actual fulfillment of her
+adventure.
+
+The sound of the door-bell brought the three girls to their feet, but
+the footfalls in the corridor, double quick time, and accentuated,
+announced merely the arrival of Jimmie Sears, and Peter Stuyvesant,
+nicknamed _Gramercy_ by common consent.
+
+"Has she come?" Peter asked.
+
+But Jimmie struck an attitude in the middle of the floor.
+
+"My daughter, oh! my daughter," he cried. "This suspense is killing
+me. For the love of Mike, children, where is she?"
+
+"She's coming," Beulah answered; "David's bringing her."
+
+Gertrude pushed him into the _chaise-lounge_ already in the
+possession of Margaret, and squeezed in between them.
+
+"Hold my hand, Jimmie," she said. "The feelings of a father are
+nothing,--_nothing_ in comparison to those which smolder in the
+maternal breast. Look at Beulah, how white she is, and Margaret is
+trembling this minute."
+
+"I'm trembling, too," Peter said, "or if I'm not trembling, I'm
+frightened."
+
+"We're all frightened," Margaret said, "but we're game."
+
+The door-bell rang again.
+
+"There they come," Beulah said, "oh! everybody be good to me."
+
+The familiar figure of their good friend David appeared on the
+threshold at this instant, and beside him an odd-looking little figure
+in a shoddy cloth coat, and a faded blue tam-o'-shanter. There was a
+long smudge of dirt reaching from the corner of her eye well down into
+the middle of her cheek. A kind of composite gasp went up from the
+waiting group, a gasp of surprise, consternation, and panic. Not one
+of the five could have told at that instant what it was he expected to
+see, or how his imagination of the child differed from the concrete
+reality, but amazement and keen disappointment constrained them. Here
+was no figure of romance and delight. No miniature Galatea half hewn
+out of the block of humanity, waiting for the chisel of a composite
+Pygmalion. Here was only a grubby, little unkempt child, like all
+other children, but not so presentable.
+
+"What's the matter with everybody?" said David with unnatural
+sharpness. "I want to present you to our ward, Miss Eleanor Hamlin,
+who has come a long way for the pleasure of meeting you. Eleanor,
+these are your cooperative parents."
+
+The child's set gaze followed his gesture obediently. David took the
+little hand in his, and led the owner into the heart of the group.
+Beulah stepped forward.
+
+"This is your Aunt Beulah, Eleanor, of whom I've been telling you."
+
+"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Aunt Beulah," the little girl
+said, as Beulah put out her hand, still uncertainly.
+
+Then the five saw a strange thing happen. The immaculate, inscrutable
+David--the aristocrat of aristocrats, the one undemonstrative,
+super-self-conscious member of the crowd, who had been delegated to
+transport the little orphan chiefly because the errand was so
+incongruous a mission on which to despatch him--David put his arm
+around the neck of the child with a quick protecting gesture, and then
+gathered her close in his arms, where she clung, quivering and
+sobbing, the unkempt curls straggling helplessly over his shoulder.
+
+He strode across the room where Margaret was still sitting upright in
+the _chaise-lounge_, her dove-gray eyes wide, her lips parted.
+
+"Here, you take her," he said, without ceremony, and slipped his
+burden into her arms.
+
+"Welcome to our city, Kiddo," Jimmie said in his throat, but nobody
+heard him.
+
+Peter, whose habit it was to walk up and down endlessly wherever he
+felt most at home, paused in his peregrination, as Margaret shyly
+gathered the rough little head to her bosom. The child met his gaze as
+he did so.
+
+"We weren't quite up to scratch," he said gravely.
+
+Beulah's eyes filled. "Peter," she said, "Peter, I didn't mean to
+be--not to be--"
+
+But Peter seemed not to know she was speaking. The child's eyes still
+held him, and he stood gazing down at her, his handsome head thrown
+slightly back; his face deeply intent; his eyes softened.
+
+"I'm your Uncle Peter, Eleanor," he said, and bent down till his lips
+touched her forehead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE EXPERIMENT BEGINS
+
+
+Eleanor walked over to the steam pipes, and examined them carefully.
+The terrible rattling noise had stopped, as had also the choking and
+gurgling that had kept her awake because it was so like the noise that
+Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt, the sick lady she had helped to take care of,
+made constantly for the last two weeks of her life. Whenever there was
+a sound that was anything like that, Eleanor could not help shivering.
+She had never seen steam pipes before. When Beulah had shown her the
+room where she was to sleep--a room all in blue, baby blue, and pink
+roses--Eleanor thought that the silver pipes standing upright in the
+corner were a part of some musical instrument, like a pipe organ. When
+the rattling sound had begun she thought that some one had come into
+the room with her, and was tuning it. She had drawn the pink silk puff
+closely about her ears, and tried not to be frightened. Trying not to
+be frightened was the way she had spent a good deal of her time since
+her Uncle Amos died, and she had had to look out for her
+grandparents.
+
+Now that it was morning, and the bright sun was streaming into the
+windows, she ventured to climb out of bed and approach the uncanny
+instrument. She tripped on the trailing folds of that nightgown her
+Aunt Beulah--it was funny that all these ladies should call themselves
+her aunts, when they were really no relation to her--had insisted on
+her wearing. Her own nightdress had been left in the time-worn
+carpetbag that Uncle David had forgotten to take out of the "handsome
+cab." She stumbled against the silver pipes. They were _hot_; so hot
+that the flesh of her arm nearly blistered, but she did not cry out.
+Here was another mysterious problem of the kind that New York
+presented at every turn, to be silently accepted, and dealt with.
+
+Her mother and father had once lived in New York. Her father had been
+born here, in a house with a brownstone front on West Tenth Street,
+wherever that was. She herself had lived in New York when she was a
+baby, though she had been born in her grandfather's house in
+Colhassett. She had lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, too, until she was four
+years old, and her father and mother had died there, both in the same
+week, of pneumonia. She wished this morning, that she could remember
+the house where they lived in New York, and the things that were in
+it.
+
+There was a knock on the door. Ought she to go and open the door in
+her nightdress? Ought she to call out "Come in?" It might be a
+gentleman, and her Aunt Beulah's nightdress was not very thick. She
+decided to cough, so that whoever was outside might understand she was
+in there, and had heard them.
+
+"May I come in, Eleanor?" Beulah's voice called.
+
+"Yes, ma'am." She started to get into bed, but Miss--Miss--the nearer
+she was to her, the harder it was to call her aunt,--Aunt Beulah might
+think it was time she was up. She compromised by sitting down in a
+chair.
+
+Beulah had passed a practically sleepless night working out the theory
+of Eleanor's development. The six had agreed on a certain sketchily
+defined method of procedure. That is, they were to read certain books
+indicated by Beulah, and to follow the general schedule that she was
+to work out and adapt to the individual needs of the child herself,
+during the first phase of the experiment. She felt that she had
+managed the reception badly, that she had not done or said the right
+thing. Peter's attitude had shown that he felt the situation had been
+clumsily handled, and it was she who was responsible for it. Peter was
+too kind to criticize her, but she had vowed in the muffled depths of
+a feverish pillow that there should be no more flagrant flaws in the
+conduct of the campaign.
+
+"Did you sleep well, Eleanor?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Are you hungry?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+The conversation languished at this.
+
+"Have you had your bath?"
+
+"I didn't know I was to have one."
+
+"Nice little girls have a bath every day."
+
+"Do they?" Eleanor asked. Her Aunt Beulah seemed to expect her to say
+something more, but she couldn't think of anything.
+
+"I'll draw your bath for you this morning. After this you will be
+expected to take it yourself."
+
+Eleanor had seen bathrooms before, but she had never been in a
+bath-tub. At her grandfather's, she had taken her Saturday night baths
+in an old wooden wash-tub, which had water poured in it from the tea
+kettle. When Beulah closed the door on her she stepped gingerly into
+the tub: the water was twice too hot, but she didn't know how to turn
+the faucet, or whether she was expected to turn it. Mrs. O'Farrel had
+told her that people had to pay for water in New York. Perhaps Aunt
+Beulah had drawn all the water she could have. She used the soap
+sparingly. Soap was expensive, she knew. She wished there was some way
+of discovering just how much of things she was expected to use. The
+number of towels distressed her, but she finally took the littlest and
+dried herself. The heat of the water had nearly parboiled her.
+
+After that, she tried to do blindly what she was told. There was a
+girl in a black dress and white apron that passed her everything she
+had to eat. Her Aunt Beulah told her to help herself to sugar and to
+cream for her oatmeal, from off this girl's tray. Her hand trembled a
+good deal, but she was fortunate enough not to spill any. After
+breakfast she was sent to wash her hands in the bathroom; she turned
+the faucet, and used a very little water. Then, when she was called,
+she went into the sitting-room and sat down, and folded her hands in
+her lap.
+
+Beulah looked at her with some perplexity. The child was docile and
+willing, but she seemed unexpectedly stupid for a girl ten years old.
+
+"Have you ever been examined for adenoids, Eleanor?" she asked
+suddenly.
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Say, 'no, Aunt Beulah.' Don't say, 'no, ma'am' and 'yes, ma'am.'
+People don't say 'no, ma'am' and 'yes, ma'am' any more, you know. They
+say 'no' and 'yes,' and then mention the name of the person to whom
+they are speaking."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Eleanor couldn't stop herself saying it. She wanted to
+correct herself. "No, Aunt Beulah, no, Aunt Beulah," but the words
+stuck in her throat.
+
+"Well, try to remember," Beulah said. She was thinking of the case in
+a book of psychology that she had been reading that morning, of a girl
+who was "pale and sleepy looking, expressionless of face, careless of
+her personal appearance," who after an operation for adenoids, had
+become "as animated and bright as before she had been lethargic and
+dull." She was pleased to see that Eleanor's fine hair had been
+scrupulously combed, and neatly braided this morning, not being able
+to realize--as how should she?--that the condition of Eleanor's fine
+spun locks on her arrival the night before, had been attributable to
+the fact that the O'Farrel baby had stolen her comb, and Eleanor had
+been too shy to mention the fact, and had combed her hair
+mermaid-wise, through her fingers.
+
+"This morning," Beulah began brightly, "I am going to turn you loose
+in the apartment, and let you do what you like. I want to get an idea
+of the things you do like, you know. You can sew, or read, or drum on
+the piano, or talk to me, anything that pleases you most. I want you
+to be happy, that's all, and to enjoy yourself in your own way."
+
+"Give the child absolute freedom in which to demonstrate the worth and
+value of its ego,"--that was what she was doing, "keeping it carefully
+under observation while you determine the individual trend along which
+to guide its development."
+
+The little girl looked about her helplessly. The room was very large
+and bright. The walls were white, and so was the woodwork, the mantle,
+and some of the furniture. Gay figured curtains hung at the windows,
+and there were little stools, and chairs, and even trays with glass
+over them, covered with the same bright colored material. Eleanor had
+never seen a room anything like it. There was no center-table, no
+crayon portraits of different members of the family, no easels, or
+scarves thrown over the corners of the pictures. There were not many
+pictures, and those that there were didn't seem to Eleanor like
+pictures at all, they were all so blurry and smudgy,--excepting one of
+a beautiful lady. She would have liked to have asked the name of that
+lady,--but her Aunt Beulah's eyes were upon her. She slipped down from
+her chair and walked across the room to the window.
+
+"Well, dear, what would make this the happiest day you can think of?"
+Beulah asked, in the tone she was given to use when she asked Gertrude
+and Margaret and Jimmie--but not often Peter--what they expected to do
+with their lives.
+
+Eleanor turned a desperate face from the window, from the row of bland
+elegant apartment buildings she had been contemplating with unseeing
+eyes.
+
+"Do I have to?" she asked Beulah piteously.
+
+"Have to what?"
+
+"Have to amuse myself in my own way? I don't know what you want me to
+do. I don't know what you think that I ought to do."
+
+A strong-minded and spoiled younger daughter of a widowed
+mother--whose chief anxiety had been to anticipate the wants of her
+children before they were expressed--with an independent income, and a
+beloved and admiring circle of intimate friends, is not likely to be
+imaginatively equipped to explore the spiritual fastnesses of a
+sensitive and alien orphan. Beulah tried earnestly to get some
+perspective on the child's point of view, but she could not. The fact
+that she was torturing the child would have been outside of the limits
+of her comprehension. She searched her mind for some immediate
+application of the methods of Madame Montessori, and produced a lump
+of modeling clay.
+
+"You don't really have to do anything, Eleanor," she said kindly. "I
+don't want you to make an effort to please me, only to be happy
+yourself. Why don't you try and see what you can do with this modeling
+clay? Just try making it up into mud pies, or anything."
+
+"Mud pies?"
+
+"Let the child teach himself the significance of contour, and the use
+of his hands, by fashioning the clay into rudimentary forms of
+beauty." That was the theory.
+
+"Yes, dear, mud pies, if you wish to."
+
+Whereupon Eleanor, conscientiously and miserably, turned out a neat
+half-dozen skilful, miniature models of the New England deep dish
+apple-pie, pricked and pinched to a nicety.
+
+Beulah, with a vision related to the nebulous stages of a study by
+Rodin, was somewhat disconcerted with this result, but she brightened
+as she thought at least she had discovered a natural tendency in the
+child that she could help her develop.
+
+"Do you like to cook, Eleanor?" she asked.
+
+In the child's mind there rose the picture of her grim apprenticeship
+on Cape Cod. She could see the querulous invalid in the sick chair,
+her face distorted with pain and impatience; she could feel the sticky
+dough in her fingers, and the heat from the stove rising round her.
+
+"I hate cooking," she said, with the first hint of passion she had
+shown in her relation to her new friends.
+
+The day dragged on wearily. Beulah took her to walk on the Drive, but
+as far as she was able to determine the child saw nothing of her
+surroundings. The crowds of trimly dressed people, the nursemaids and
+babies, the swift slim outlines of the whizzing motors, even the
+battleships lying so suggestively quiescent on the river before
+them--all the spectacular, vivid panorama of afternoon on Riverside
+Drive--seemed absolutely without interest or savor to the child.
+Beulah's despair and chagrin were increasing almost as rapidly as
+Eleanor's.
+
+Late in the afternoon Beulah suggested a nap. "I'll sit here and read
+for a few minutes," she said, as she tucked Eleanor under the covers.
+Then, since she was quite desperate for subjects of conversation, and
+still determined by the hot memory of her night's vigil to leave no
+stone of geniality unturned, she added:
+
+"This is a book that I am reading to help me to know how to guide and
+educate you. I haven't had much experience in adopting children, you
+know, Eleanor, and when there is anything in this world that you don't
+know, there is usually some good and useful book that will help you to
+find out all about it."
+
+Even to herself her words sounded hatefully patronizing and pedagogic,
+but she was past the point of believing that she could handle the
+situation with grace. When Eleanor's breath seemed to be coming
+regularly, she put down her book with some thankfulness and escaped to
+the tea table, where she poured tea for her aunt, and explained the
+child's idiosyncrasies swiftly and smoothly to that estimable lady.
+
+Left alone, Eleanor lay still for a while, staring at the design of
+pink roses on the blue wall-paper. On Cape Cod, pink and blue were not
+considered to be colors that could be combined. There was nothing at
+all in New York like anything she knew or remembered. She sighed. Then
+she made her way to the window and picked up the book Beulah had been
+reading. It was about _her_, Aunt Beulah had said,--directions for
+educating her and training her. The paragraph that caught her eye
+where the book was open had been marked with a pencil.
+
+"This girl had such a fat, frog like expression of face," Eleanor
+read, "that her neighbors thought her an idiot. She was found to be
+the victim of a severe case of ad-e-noids." As she spelled out the
+word, she recognized it as the one Beulah had used earlier in the day.
+She remembered the sudden sharp look with which the question had been
+accompanied. The sick lady for whom she had "worked out" had often
+called her an idiot when her feet had stumbled, or she had failed to
+understand at once what was required of her.
+
+Eleanor read on. She encountered a text replete with hideous examples
+of backward and deficient children, victims of adenoids who had been
+restored to a state of normality by the removal of the affliction. She
+had no idea what an adenoid was. She had a hazy notion that it was a
+kind of superfluous bone in the region of the breast, but her anguish
+was rooted in the fact that this, _this_ was the good and useful book
+that her Aunt Beulah had found it necessary to resort to for guidance,
+in the case of her own--Eleanor's--education.
+
+When Beulah, refreshed by a cup of tea and further sustained by the
+fact that Margaret and Peter had both telephoned they were coming to
+dinner, returned to her charge, she found the stolid, apathetic child
+she had left, sprawling face downward on the floor, in a passion of
+convulsive weeping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PETER ELUCIDATES
+
+
+It was Peter who got at the heart of the trouble. Margaret tried, but
+though Eleanor clung to her and relaxed under the balm of her gentle
+caresses, the child remained entirely inarticulate until Peter
+gathered her up in his arms, and signed to the others that he wished
+to be left alone with her.
+
+By the time he rejoined the two in the drawing-room--he had missed his
+after-dinner coffee in the long half-hour that he had spent shut into
+the guest room with the child--Jimmie and Gertrude had arrived, and
+the four sat grouped together to await his pronouncement.
+
+"She thinks she has adenoids. She wants the doll that David left in
+that carpetbag of hers he forgot to take out of the 'Handsome cab.'
+She wants to be loved, and she wants to grow up and write poetry for
+the newspapers," he announced. "Also she will eat a piece of bread and
+butter and a glass of milk, as soon as it can conveniently be provided
+for her."
+
+"When did you take holy orders, Gram?" Jimmie inquired. "How do you
+work the confessional? I wish I could make anybody give anything up to
+me, but I can't. Did you just go into that darkened chamber and say to
+the kid, 'Child of my adoption,--cough,' and she coughed, or are you
+the master of some subtler system of choking the truth out of 'em?"
+
+"Anybody would tell anything to Peter if he happened to want to know
+it," Margaret said seriously. "Wouldn't they, Beulah?"
+
+Beulah nodded. "She wants to be loved," Peter had said. It was so
+simple for some people to open their hearts and give out
+love,--easily, lightly. She was not made like that,--loving came hard
+with her, but when once she had given herself, it was done. Peter
+didn't know how hard she had tried to do right with the child that
+day.
+
+"The doll is called the rabbit doll, though there is no reason why it
+should be, as it only looks the least tiny bit like a rabbit, and is a
+girl. Its other name is Gwendolyn, and it always goes to bed with her.
+Mrs. O'Farrels aunt said that children always stopped playing with
+dolls when they got to be as big as Eleanor, but she isn't never
+going to stop.--You must get after that double negative, Beulah.--She
+once wrote a poem beginning: 'The rabbit doll, it is my own.' She
+thinks that she has a frog-like expression of face, and that is why
+Beulah doesn't like her better. She is perfectly willing to have her
+adenoids cut out, if Beulah thinks it would improve her, but she
+doesn't want to 'take anything,' when she has it done."
+
+"You are a wonder, Gram," Gertrude said admiringly.
+
+"Oh! I have made a mess of it, haven't I?" Beulah said. "Is she
+homesick?"
+
+"Yes, she's homesick," Peter said gravely, "but not for anything she's
+left in Colhassett. David told you the story, didn't he?--She is
+homesick for her own kind, for people she can really love, and she's
+never found any of them. Her grandfather and grandmother are old and
+decrepit. She feels a terrible responsibility for them, but she
+doesn't love them, not really. She's too hungry to love anybody until
+she finds the friends she can cling to--without compromise."
+
+"An emotional aristocrat," Gertrude murmured. "It's the curse of
+taste."
+
+"Help! Help!" Jimmie cried, grimacing at Gertrude. "Didn't she have
+any kids her own age to play with?"
+
+"She had 'em, but she didn't have any time to play with them. You
+forget she was supporting a family all the time, Jimmie."
+
+"By jove, I'd like to forget it."
+
+"She had one friend named Albertina Weston that she used to run around
+with in school. Albertina also wrote poetry. They used to do poetic
+'stunts' of one poem a day on some subject selected by Albertina. I
+think Albertina was a snob. She candidly admitted to Eleanor that if
+her clothes were more stylish, she would go round with her more.
+Eleanor seemed to think that was perfectly natural."
+
+"How do you do it, Peter?" Jimmie besought. "If I could get one
+damsel, no matter how tender her years, to confide in me like that I'd
+be happy for life. It's nothing to you with those eyes, and that
+matinee forehead of yours; but I want 'em to weep down my neck, and I
+can't make 'em do it."
+
+"Wait till you grow up, Jimmie, and then see what happens," Gertrude
+soothed him.
+
+"Wait till it's your turn with our child," Margaret said. "In two
+months more she's coming to you."
+
+"Do I ever forget it for a minute?" Jimmie cried.
+
+"The point of the whole business is," Peter continued, "that we've got
+a human soul on our hands. We imported a kind of scientific plaything
+to exercise our spiritual muscle on, and we've got a real specimen of
+womanhood in embryo. I don't know whether the situation appalls you as
+much as it does me--" He broke off as he heard the bell ring.
+
+"That's David, he said he was coming."
+
+Then as David appeared laden with the lost carpetbag and a huge box of
+chocolates, he waved him to a chair, and took up his speech again. "I
+don't know whether the situation appalls you, as much as it does
+me--if I don't get this off my chest now, David, I can't do it at
+all--but the thought of that poor little waif in there and the
+struggle she's had, and the shy valiant spirit of her,--the sand that
+she's got, the _sand_ that put her through and kept her mouth shut
+through experiences that might easily have killed her, why I feel as
+if I'd give anything I had in the world to make it up to her, and yet
+I'm not altogether sure that I could--that we could--that it's any of
+our business to try it."
+
+"There's nobody else who will, if we don't," David said.
+
+"That's it," Peter said, "I've never known any one of our bunch to
+quit anything that they once started in on, but just by way of
+formality there is one thing we ought to do about this proposition
+before we slide into it any further, and that is to agree that we want
+to go on with it, that we know what we're in for, and that we're
+game."
+
+"We decided all that before we sent for the kid," Jimmie said, "didn't
+we?"
+
+"We decided we'd adopt a child, but we didn't decide we'd adopt this
+one. Taking the responsibility of this one is the question before the
+house just at present."
+
+"The idea being," David added, "that she's a fairly delicate piece of
+work, and as time advances she's going to be _delicater_."
+
+"And that it's an awkward matter to play with souls," Beulah
+contributed; whereupon Jimmie murmured, "Browning," sotto voice.
+
+"She may be all that you say, Gram," Jimmie said, after a few minutes
+of silence, "a thunderingly refined and high-minded young waif, but
+you will admit that without an interpreter of the same class, she
+hasn't been much good to us so far."
+
+"Good lord, she isn't refined and high-minded," Peter said. "That's
+not the idea. She's simply supremely sensitive and full of the most
+pathetic possibilities. If we're going to undertake her we ought to
+realize fully what we're up against, and acknowledge it,--that's all
+I'm trying to say, and I apologize for assuming that it's more my
+business than anybody's to say it."
+
+"That charming humility stuff, if I could only remember to pull it."
+
+The sofa pillow that Gertrude aimed at Jimmie hit him full on the
+mouth and he busied himself pretending to eat it. Beulah scorned the
+interruption.
+
+"Of course, we're going to undertake her," Beulah said. "We are signed
+up and it's all down in writing. If anybody has any objections, they
+can state them now." She looked about her dramatically. On every young
+face was reflected the same earnestness that set gravely on her own.
+
+"The 'ayes' have it," Jimmie murmured. "From now on I become not only
+a parent, but a soul doctor." He rose, and tiptoed solemnly toward the
+door of Eleanor's room.
+
+"Where are you going, Jimmie?" Beulah called, as he was disappearing
+around the bend in the corridor.
+
+He turned back to lift an admonitory finger.
+
+"Shush," he said, "do not interrupt me. I am going to wrap baby up in
+a blanket and bring her out to her mothers and fathers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ELEANOR ENJOYS HERSELF IN HER OWN WAY
+
+
+"I am in society here," Eleanor wrote to her friend Albertina, with a
+pardonable emphasis on that phase of her new existence that would
+appeal to the haughty ideals of Miss Weston, "I don't have to do any
+housework, or anything. I sleep under a pink silk bedquilt, and I have
+all new clothes. I have a new black pattern leather sailor hat that I
+sopose you would laugh at. It cost six dollars and draws the sun down
+to my head but I don't say anything. I have six aunts and uncles all
+diferent names and ages but grown up. Uncle Peter is the most elderly,
+he is twenty-five. I know becase we gave him a birthday party with a
+cake. I sat at the table. I wore my crape da shine dress. You would
+think that was pretty, well it is. There is a servant girl to do evry
+thing even passing your food to you on a tray. I wish you could come
+to visit me. I stay two months in a place and get broghut up there.
+Aunt Beulah is peculiar but nice when you know her. She is stric and
+at first I thought we was not going to get along. She thought I had
+adenoids and I thought she dislikt me too much, but it turned out not.
+I take lessons from her every morning like they give at Rogers
+College, not like publick school. I have to think what I want to do a
+good deal and then do it. At first she turned me loose to enjoy myself
+and I could not do it, but now we have disapline which makes it all
+right. My speling is weak, but uncle Peter says Stevanson could not
+spel and did not care. Stevanson was the poat who wrote the birdie
+with a yellow bill in the reader. I wish you would tel me if Grandma's
+eye is worse and what about Grandfather's rheumatism.
+
+"Your fond friend, Eleanor.
+
+"P. S. We have a silver organ in all the rooms to have heat in. I was
+afrayd of them at first."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the letters to her grandparents, however, the undercurrent of
+anxiety about the old people, which was a ruling motive in her life,
+became apparent.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Grandma and Dear Grandpa," she wrote,
+
+"I have been here a weak now. I inclose my salary, fifteen dollars
+($15.00) which I hope you will like. I get it for doing evry thing I
+am told and being adoptid besides. You can tell the silectmen that I
+am rich now and can support you just as good as Uncle Amos. I want
+Grandpa to buy some heavy undershurts right of. He will get a couff if
+he doesn't do it. Tell him to rub your arm evry night before you go to
+bed, Grandma, and to have a hot soapstone for you. If you don't have
+your bed hot you will get newmonia and I can't come home to take care
+of you, becase my salary would stop. I like New York better now that I
+have lived here some. I miss seeing you around, and Grandpa.
+
+"The cook cooks on a gas stove that is very funny. I asked her how it
+went and she showed me it. She is going to leve, but lucky thing the
+hired girl can cook till Aunt Beulah gets a nother cook as antyseptic
+as this cook. In Rogers College they teach ladies to have their cook's
+and hired girl's antyseptic. It is a good idear becase of sickness. I
+inclose a recipete for a good cake. You can make it sating down. You
+don't have to stir it much, and Grandpa can bring you the things. I
+will write soon. I hope you are all right. Let me hear that you are
+all right. Don't forget to put the cat out nights. I hope she is all
+right, but remember the time she stole the butter fish. I miss you,
+and I miss the cat around. Uncle David pays me my salary out of his
+own pocket, because he is the richest, but I like Uncle Peter the
+best. He is very handsome and we like to talk to each other the best.
+Goodbye, Eleanor."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+But it was on the varicolored pages of a ruled tablet--with a picture
+on its cover of a pink cheeked young lady beneath a cherry tree, and
+marked in large straggling letters also varicolored "The Cherry
+Blossom Tablet"--that Eleanor put down her most sacred thoughts. On
+the outside, just above the cherry tree, her name was written with a
+pencil that had been many times wet to get the desired degree of
+blackness, "Eleanor Hamlin, Colhassett, Massachusetts. Private Dairy,"
+and on the first page was this warning in the same painstaking,
+heavily shaded chirography, "This book is sacrid, and not be trespased
+in or read one word of. By order of owner. E. H."
+
+It was the private diary and Gwendolyn, the rabbit doll, and a small
+blue china shepherdess given her by Albertina, that constituted
+Eleanor's _lares et penates_. When David had finally succeeded in
+tracing the ancient carpetbag in the lost and found department of the
+cab company, Eleanor was able to set up her household gods, and draw
+from them that measure of strength and security inseparable from their
+familiar presence. She always slept with two of the three beloved
+objects, and after Beulah had learned to understand and appreciate the
+child's need for unsupervised privacy, she divined that the little
+girl was happiest when she could devote at least an hour or two a day
+to the transcribing of earnest sentences on the pink, blue and yellow
+pages of the Cherry Blossom Tablet, and the mysterious games that she
+played with the rabbit doll. That these games consisted largely in
+making the rabbit doll impersonate Eleanor, while the child herself
+became in turn each one of the six uncles and aunts, and exhorted the
+victim accordingly, did not of course occur to Beulah. It did occur to
+her that the pink, blue and yellow pages would have made interesting
+reading to Eleanor's guardians, if they had been privileged to read
+all that was chronicled there.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My aunt Beulah wears her hair to high of her forrid.
+
+"My aunt Margaret wears her hair to slic on the sides.
+
+"My aunt Gertrude wears her hair just about right.
+
+"My aunt Margaret is the best looking, and has the nicest way.
+
+"My aunt Gertrude is the funniest. I never laugh at what she says, but
+I have trouble not to. By thinking of Grandpa's rheumaticks I stop
+myself just in time. Aunt Beulah means all right, and wants to do
+right and have everybody else the same.
+
+"Uncle David is not handsome, but good.
+
+"Uncle Jimmie is not handsome, but his hair curls.
+
+"Uncle Peter is the most handsome man that ere the sun shown on. That
+is poetry. He has beautiful teeth, and I like him.
+
+"Yesterday the Wordsworth Club--that's what Uncle Jimmie calls us
+because he says we are seven--went to the Art Museum to edjucate me in
+art.
+
+"Aunt Beulah wanted to take me to one room and keep me there until I
+asked to come out. Uncle Jimmie wanted to show me the statures. Uncle
+David said I ought to begin with the Ming period and work down to Art
+Newvoo. Aunts Gertrude and Margaret wanted to take me to the room of
+the great masters. While they were talking Uncle Peter and I went to
+see a picture that made me cry. I asked him who she was. He said that
+wasn't the important thing, that the important thing was that one man
+had nailed his dream. He didn't doubt that lots of other painters had,
+but this one meant the most to him. When I cried he said, 'You're all
+right, Baby. You know.' Then he reached down and kissed me."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the month progressed, it seemed to Beulah that she was making
+distinct progress with the child. Since the evening when Peter had won
+Eleanor's confidence and explained her mental processes, her task had
+been illumined for her. She belonged to that class of women in whom
+maternity arouses late. She had not the facile sympathy which accepts
+a relationship without the endorsement of the understanding, and she
+was too young to have much toleration for that which was not perfectly
+clear to her.
+
+She had started in with high courage to demonstrate the value of a
+sociological experiment. She hoped later, though these hopes she had
+so far kept to herself, to write, or at least to collaborate with some
+worthy educator, on a book which would serve as an exact guide to
+other philanthropically inclined groups who might wish to follow the
+example of cooperative adoption; but the first day of actual contact
+with her problem had chilled her. She had put nothing down in her
+note-book. She had made no scientific progress. There seemed to be no
+intellectual response in the child.
+
+Peter had set all these things right for her. He had shown her the
+child's uncompromising integrity of spirit. The keynote of Beulah's
+nature was, as Jimmie said, that she "had to be shown." Peter pointed
+out the fact to her that Eleanor's slogan also was, "No compromise."
+As Eleanor became more familiar with her surroundings this spirit
+became more and more evident.
+
+"I could let down the hem of these dresses, Aunt Beulah," she said one
+day, looking down at the long stretch of leg protruding from the chic
+blue frock that made her look like a Boutet de Monvil. "I can't hem
+very good, but my stitches don't show much."
+
+"That dress isn't too short, dear. It's the way little girls always
+wear them. Do little girls on Cape Cod wear them longer?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Beulah."
+
+"How long do they wear them?"
+
+"Albertina," they had reached the point of discussion of Albertina
+now, and Beulah was proud of it, "wore her dresses to her ankles,
+be--because her--her legs was so fat. She said that mine was--were
+getting to be fat too, and it wasn't refined to wear short dresses,
+when your legs were fat."
+
+"There are a good many conflicting ideas of refinement in the world,
+Eleanor," Beulah said.
+
+"I've noticed there are, since I came to New York," Eleanor answered
+unexpectedly.
+
+Beulah's academic spirit recognized and rejoiced in the fact that with
+all her docility, Eleanor held firmly to her preconceived notions. She
+continued to wear her dresses short, but when she was not actually on
+exhibition, she hid her long legs behind every available bit of
+furniture or drapery.
+
+The one doubt left in her mind, of the child's initiative and
+executive ability, was destined to be dissipated by the rather heroic
+measures sometimes resorted to by a superior agency taking an ironic
+hand in the game of which we have been too inhumanly sure.
+
+On the fifth week of Eleanor's stay Beulah became a real aunt, the
+cook left, and her own aunt and official chaperon, little Miss
+Prentis, was laid low with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism.
+Beulah's excitement on these various counts, combined with
+indiscretions in the matter of overshoes and overfatigue, made her an
+easy victim to a wandering grip germ. She opened her eyes one morning
+only to shut them with a groan of pain. There was an ache in her head
+and a thickening in her chest, the significance of which she knew only
+too well. She found herself unable to rise. She lifted a hoarse voice
+and called for Mary, the maid, who did not sleep in the house but was
+due every morning at seven. But the gentle knock on the door was
+followed by the entrance of Eleanor, not Mary.
+
+"Mary didn't come, Aunt Beulah. I thought you was--were so tired, I'd
+let you have your sleep out. I heard Miss Prentis calling, and I made
+her some gruel, and I got my own breakfast."
+
+"Oh! how dreadful," Beulah gasped in the face of this new calamity;
+"and I'm really so sick. I don't know what we'll do."
+
+Eleanor regarded her gravely. Then she put a professional hand on her
+pulse and her forehead.
+
+"You've got the grip," she announced.
+
+"I'm afraid I have, Eleanor, and Doctor Martin's out of town, and
+won't be back till to-morrow when he comes to Aunt Ann. I don't know
+what we'll do."
+
+"I'll tend to things," Eleanor said. "You lie still and close your
+eyes, and don't put your arms out of bed and get chilled."
+
+"Well, you'll have to manage somehow," Beulah moaned; "how, I don't
+know, I'm sure. Give Aunt Annie her medicine and hot water bags, and
+just let me be. I'm too sick to care what happens."
+
+After the door had closed on the child a dozen things occurred to
+Beulah that might have been done for her. She was vaguely faint for
+her breakfast. Her feet were cold. She thought of the soothing warmth
+of antiphlogistine when applied to the chest. She thought of the
+quinine on the shelf in the bathroom. Once more she tried lifting her
+head, but she could not accomplish a sitting posture. She shivered as
+a draft from the open window struck her.
+
+"If I could only be taken in hand this morning," she thought, "I know
+it could be broken."
+
+The door opened softly. Eleanor, in the cook's serviceable apron of
+gingham that would have easily contained another child the same size,
+swung the door open with one hand and held it to accommodate the
+passage of the big kitchen tray, deeply laden with a heterogeneous
+collection of objects. She pulled two chairs close to the bedside and
+deposited her burden upon them. Then she removed from the tray a
+goblet of some steaming fluid and offered it to Beulah.
+
+"It's cream of wheat gruel," she said, and added ingratiatingly: "It
+tastes nice in a tumbler."
+
+Beulah drank the hot decoction gratefully and found, to her surprise,
+that it was deliciously made.
+
+Eleanor took the glass away from her and placed it on the tray, from
+which she took what looked to Beulah like a cloth covered omelet,--at
+any rate, it was a crescent shaped article slightly yellow in tone.
+Eleanor tested it with a finger.
+
+"It's just about right," she said. Then she fixed Beulah with a stern
+eye. "Open your chest," she commanded, "and show me the spot where
+it's worst. I've made a meal poultice."
+
+Beulah hesitated only a second, then she obeyed meekly. She had never
+seen a meal poultice before, but the heat on her afflicted chest was
+grateful to her. Antiphlogistine was only Denver mud anyhow. Meekly,
+also, she took the six grains of quinine and the weak dose of jamaica
+ginger and water that she was next offered. She felt encouraged and
+refreshed enough by this treatment to display some slight curiosity
+when the little girl produced a card of villainous looking
+safety-pins.
+
+"I'm going to pin you in with these, Aunt Beulah," she said, "and then
+sweat your cold out of you."
+
+"Indeed, you're not," Beulah said; "don't be absurd, Eleanor. The
+theory of the grip is--," but she was addressing merely the vanishing
+hem of cook's voluminous apron.
+
+The child returned almost instantly with three objects of assorted
+sizes that Beulah could not identify. From the outside they looked
+like red flannel and from the way Eleanor handled them it was evident
+that they also were hot.
+
+"I het--heated the flatirons," Eleanor explained, "the way I do for
+Grandma, and I'm going to spread 'em around you, after you're pinned
+in the blankets, and you got to lie there till you prespire, and
+prespire good."
+
+"I won't do it," Beulah moaned, "I won't do any such thing. Go away,
+child."
+
+"I cured Grandma and Grandpa and Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt that I worked
+for, and I'm going to cure you," Eleanor said.
+
+"No."
+
+Eleanor advanced on her threateningly.
+
+"Put your arms under those covers," she said, "or I'll dash a glass of
+cold water in your face,"--and Beulah obeyed her.
+
+Peter nodded wisely when Beulah, cured by these summary though
+obsolete methods, told the story in full detail. Gertrude had laughed
+until the invalid had enveloped herself in the last few shreds of her
+dignity and ordered her out of the room, and the others had been
+scarcely more sympathetic.
+
+"I know that it's funny, Peter," she said, "but you see, I can't help
+worrying about it just the same. Of course, as soon as I was up she
+was just as respectful and obedient to my slightest wish as she ever
+was, but at the time, when she was lording it over me so, she--she
+actually slapped me. You never saw such a--blazingly determined little
+creature."
+
+Peter smiled,--gently, as was Peter's way when any friend of his made
+an appeal to him.
+
+"That's all right, Beulah," he said, "don't you let it disturb you for
+an instant. This manifestation had nothing to do with our experiment.
+Our experiment is working fine--better than I dreamed it would ever
+work. What happened to Eleanor, you know, was simply this. Some of the
+conditions of her experience were recreated suddenly, and she
+reverted."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JIMMIE BECOMES A PARENT
+
+
+The entrance into the dining-room of the curly headed young man and
+his pretty little niece, who had a suite on the eighth floor, as the
+room clerk informed all inquirers, was always a matter of interest to
+the residents of the Hotel Winchester. They were an extremely
+picturesque pair to the eye seeking for romance and color. The child
+had the pure, clear cut features of the cameo type of New England
+maidenhood. She was always dressed in some striking combination of
+blue, deep blue like her eyes, with blue hair ribbons. Her
+good-looking young relative, with hair almost as near the color of the
+sun as her own, seemed to be entirely devoted to her, which,
+considering the charm of the child and the radiant and magnetic spirit
+of the young man himself, was a delightfully natural manifestation.
+
+But one morning near the close of the second week of their stay, the
+usual radiation of resilient youth was conspicuously absent from the
+young man's demeanor, and the child's face reflected the gloom that
+sat so incongruously on the contour of an optimist. The little girl
+fumbled her menu card, but the waitress--the usual aging pedagogic
+type of the small residential hotel--stood unnoticed at the young
+man's elbow for some minutes before he was sufficiently aroused from
+his gloomy meditations to address her. When he turned to her at last,
+however, it was with the grin that she had grown to associate with
+him,--the grin, the absence of which had kept her waiting behind his
+chair with a patience that she was, except in a case where her
+affections were involved, entirely incapable of. Jimmie's
+protestations of inability to make headway with the ladies were not
+entirely sincere.
+
+"Bring me everything on the menu," he said, with a wave of his hand in
+the direction of that painstaking pasteboard. "Coffee, tea, fruit,
+marmalade, breakfast food, ham and eggs. Bring my niece here the same.
+That's all." With another wave of the hand he dismissed her.
+
+"You can't eat it all, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor protested.
+
+"I'll make a bet with you," Jimmie declared. "I'll bet you a dollar
+to a doughnut that if she brings it all, I'll eat it."
+
+"Oh! Uncle Jimmie, you know she won't bring it. You never bet so I can
+get the dollar,--you never do."
+
+"I never bet so I can get my doughnut, if it comes to that."
+
+"I don't know where to buy any doughnuts," Eleanor said; "besides,
+Uncle Jimmie, I don't really consider that I owe them. I never really
+say that I'm betting, and you tell me I've lost before I've made up my
+mind anything about it."
+
+"Speaking of doughnuts," Jimmie said, his face still wearing the look
+of dejection under a grin worn awry, "can you cook, Eleanor? Can you
+roast a steak, and saute baked beans, and stew sausages, and fry out a
+breakfast muffin? Does she look like a cook to you?" he suddenly
+demanded of the waitress, who was serving him, with an apologetic eye
+on the menu, the invariable toast-coffee-and-three-minute-egg
+breakfast that he had eaten every morning since his arrival.
+
+The waitress smiled toothily. "She looks like a capable one," she
+pronounced.
+
+"I _can_ cook, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor giggled, "but not the way you
+said. You don't roast steak, or--or--"
+
+"Don't you?" Jimmie asked with the expression of pained surprise that
+never failed to make his ward wriggle with delight. There were links
+in the educational scheme that Jimmie forged better than any of the
+cooperative guardians. Not even Jimmie realized the value of the
+giggle as a developing factor in Eleanor's existence. He took three
+swallows of coffee and frowned into his cup. "I can make coffee," he
+added. "Good coffee. Well, we may as well look the facts in the face,
+Eleanor. The jig's up. We're moving away from this elegant hostelry
+to-morrow."
+
+"Are we?" Eleanor asked.
+
+"Yes, Kiddo. Apologies to Aunt Beulah (mustn't call you Kiddo) and the
+reason is, that I'm broke. I haven't got any money at all, Eleanor,
+and I don't know where I am going to get any. You see, it is this way.
+I lost my job six weeks ago."
+
+"But you go to work every morning, Uncle Jimmie?"
+
+"I leave the house, that is. I go looking for work, but so far no nice
+juicy job has come rolling down into my lap. I haven't told you this
+before because,--well--when Aunt Beulah comes down every day to give
+you your lessons I wanted it to look all O. K. I thought if you didn't
+know, you couldn't forget sometime and tell her."
+
+"I don't tattle tale," Eleanor said.
+
+"I know you don't, Eleanor. It's only my doggone pride that makes me
+want to keep up the bluff, but you're a game kid,--you--know. I tried
+to get you switched off to one of the others till I could get on my
+feet, but--no, they just thought I had stage fright. I couldn't
+insist. It would be pretty humiliating to me to admit that I couldn't
+support one-sixth of a child that I'd given my solemn oath to
+be-parent."
+
+"To--to what?"
+
+"Be-parent, if it isn't a word, I invent it. It's awfully tough luck
+for you, and if you want me to I'll own up to the crowd that I can't
+swing you, but if you are willing to stick, why, we'll fix up some
+kind of a way to cut down expenses and bluff it out."
+
+Eleanor considered the prospect. Jimmie watched her apparent
+hesitation with some dismay.
+
+"Say the word," he declared, "and I'll tell 'em."
+
+"Oh! I don't want you to tell 'em," Eleanor cried. "I was just
+thinking. If you could get me a place, you know, I could go out to
+work. You don't eat very much for a man, and I might get my meals
+thrown in--"
+
+"Don't, Eleanor, don't," Jimmie agonized. "I've got a scheme for us
+all right. This--this embarrassment is only temporary. The day will
+come when I can provide you with Pol Roge and diamonds. My father is
+rich, you know, but he swore to me that I couldn't support myself, and
+I swore to him that I could, and if I don't do it, I'm damned. I am
+really, and that isn't swearing."
+
+"I know it isn't, when you mean it the way they say in the Bible."
+
+"I don't want the crowd to know. I don't want Gertrude to know. She
+hasn't got much idea of me anyway. I'll get another job, if I can only
+hold out."
+
+"I can go to work in a store," Eleanor cried. "I can be one of those
+little girls in black dresses that runs between counters."
+
+"Do you want to break your poor Uncle James' heart, Eleanor,--do
+you?"
+
+"No, Uncle Jimmie."
+
+"Then listen to me. I've borrowed a studio, a large barnlike studio on
+Washington Square, suitably equipped with pots and pans and kettles.
+Also, I am going to borrow the wherewithal to keep us going. It isn't
+a bad kind of place if anybody likes it. There's one dinky little
+bedroom for you and a cot bed for me, choked in bagdad. If you could
+kind of engineer the cooking end of it, with me to do the dirty work,
+of course, I think we could be quite snug and cozy."
+
+"I know we could, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor said. "Will Uncle Peter come
+to see us just the same?"
+
+It thus befell that on the fourteenth day of the third month of her
+residence in New York, Eleanor descended into Bohemia. Having no least
+suspicion of the real state of affairs--for Jimmie, like most
+apparently expansive people who are given to rattling nonsense, was
+actually very reticent about his own business--the other members of
+the sextette did not hesitate to show their chagrin and disapproval at
+the change in his manner of living.
+
+"The Winchester was an ideal place for Eleanor," Beulah wailed. "It's
+deadly respectable and middle class, but it was just the kind of
+atmosphere for her to accustom herself to. She was learning to manage
+herself so prettily. This morning when I went to the studio--I wanted
+to get the lessons over early, and take Eleanor to see that exhibition
+of Bavarian dolls at Kuhner's--I found her washing up a trail of
+dishes in that closet behind the screen--you've seen it,
+Gertrude?--like some poor little scullery maid. She said that Jimmie
+had made an omelet for breakfast. If he'd made fifty omelets there
+couldn't have been a greater assortment of dirty dishes and kettles."
+
+Gertrude smiled.
+
+"Jimmie made an omelet for me once for which he used two dozen eggs.
+He kept breaking them until he found the yolks of a color to suit him.
+He said pale yolks made poor omelets, so he threw all the pale ones
+away."
+
+"I suppose that you sat by and let him," Beulah said. "You would let
+Jimmie do anything. You're as bad as Margaret is about David."
+
+"Or as bad as you are about Peter."
+
+"There we go, just like any silly, brainless girls, whose chief object
+in life is the--the other sex," Beulah cried inconsistently. "Oh! I
+hate that kind of thing."
+
+"So do I--in theory--" Gertrude answered, a little dreamily. "Where do
+Jimmie and Eleanor get the rest of their meals?"
+
+"I can't seem to find out," Beulah said. "I asked Eleanor point-blank
+this morning what they had to eat last night and where they had it,
+and she said, 'That's a secret, Aunt Beulah.' When I asked her why it
+was a secret and who it was a secret with, she only looked worried,
+and said she guessed she wouldn't talk about it at all because that
+was the only way to be safe about tattling. You know what I think--I
+think Jimmie is taking her around to the cafes and all the shady
+extravagant restaurants. He thinks it's sport and it keeps him from
+getting bored with the child."
+
+"Well, that's one way of educating the young," Gertrude said, "but I
+think you are wrong, Beulah."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ONE DESCENT INTO BOHEMIA
+
+
+"Aunt Beulah does not think that Uncle Jimmie is bringing me up
+right," Eleanor confided to the pages of her diary. "She comes down
+here and is very uncomforterble. Well he is bringing me up good, in
+some ways better than she did. When he swears he always puts out his
+hand for me to slap him. He had enough to swear of. He can't get any
+work or earn wages. The advertisement business is on the bum this year
+becase times are so hard up. The advertisers have to save their money
+and advertising agents are failing right and left. So poor Uncle
+Jimmie can't get a place to work at.
+
+"The people in the other studios are very neighborly. Uncle Jimmie
+leaves a sine on the door when he goes out. It says 'Don't Knock.'
+They don't they come right in and borrow things. Uncle Jimmie says not
+to have much to do with them, becase they are so queer, but when I am
+not at home, the ladies come to call on him, and drink Moxie or
+something. I know becase once I caught them. Uncle Jimmie says I shall
+not have Behemiar thrust upon me by him, and to keep away from these
+ladies until I grow up and then see if I like them. Aunt Beulah thinks
+that Uncle Jimmie takes me around to other studios and I won't tell
+but he does not take me anywhere except to walk and have ice-cream
+soda, but I say I don't want it because of saving the ten cents. We
+cook on an old gas stove that smells. I can't do very good
+housekeeping becase things are not convenient. I haven't any oven to
+do a Saturday baking in, and Uncle Jimmie won't let me do the washing.
+I should feel more as if I earned my keap if I baked beans and made
+boiled dinners and layer cake, but in New York they don't eat much but
+hearty food and saluds. It isn't stylish to have cake and pie and
+pudding all at one meal. Poor Grandpa would starve. He eats pie for
+his breakfast, but if I told anybody they would laugh. If I wrote
+Albertina what folks eat in New York she would laugh.
+
+"Uncle Jimmie is teaching me to like salud. He laughs when I cut up
+lettice and put sugar on it. He teaches me to like olives and dried
+up sausages and sour crought. He says it is important to be edjucated
+in eating, and everytime we go to the Delicate Essenn store to buy
+something that will edjucate me better. He teaches me to say 'I beg
+your pardon,' and 'Polly vous Fransay?' and to courtesy and how to
+enter a room the way you do in private theatricals. He says it isn't
+knowing these things so much as knowing when you do them that counts,
+and then Aunt Beulah complains that I am not being brought up.
+
+"I have not seen Uncle Peter for a weak. He said he was going away. I
+miss him. I would not have to tell him how I was being brought up, and
+whether I was hitting the white lights as Uncle Jimmie says.--He would
+know."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eleanor did not write Albertina during the time when she was living in
+the studio. Some curious inversion of pride kept her silent on the
+subject of the change in her life. Albertina would have turned up her
+nose at the studio, Eleanor knew. Therefore, she would not so much as
+address an envelope to that young lady from an interior which she
+would have beheld with scorn. She held long conversations with
+Gwendolyn, taking the part of Albertina, on the subject of this
+snobbishness of attitude.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Lots of people in New York have to live in little teny, weeny rooms,
+Albertina," she would say. "Rents are perfectly awful here. This
+studio is so big I get tired dusting all the way round it, and even if
+it isn't furnished very much, why, think how much furnishing would
+cost, and carpets and gold frames for the pictures! The pictures that
+are in here already, without any frames, would sell for hundreds of
+dollars apiece if the painter could get anybody to buy them. You ought
+to be very thankful for such a place, Albertina, instead of feeling so
+stuck up that you pick up your skirts from it."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Albertina's superiority of mind was impregnable. Her spirit sat in
+judgment on all the conditions of Eleanor's new environment. She
+seemed to criticize everything. She hated the nicked, dun colored
+dishes they ate from, and the black bottomed pots and pans that all
+the energy of Eleanor's energetic little elbow could not restore to
+decency again. She hated the cracked, dun colored walls, and the
+mottled floor that no amount of sweeping and dusting seemed to make an
+impression on. She hated the compromise of housekeeping in an
+attic,--she who had been bred in an atmosphere of shining
+nickle-plated ranges and linoleum, where even the kitchen pump gleamed
+brightly under its annual coat of good green paint. She hated the
+compromise, that was the burden of her complaint--either in the person
+of Albertina or Gwendolyn, whether she lay in the crook of Eleanor's
+arm in the lumpy bed where she reposed at the end of the day's labor,
+or whether she sat bolt upright on the lumpy cot in the studio, the
+broken bisque arm, which Jimmie insisted on her wearing in a sling
+whenever he was present, dangling limply at her side in the relaxation
+Eleanor preferred for it.
+
+The fact of not having adequate opportunity to keep her house in order
+troubled the child, for her days were zealously planned by her
+enthusiastic guardians. Beulah came at ten o'clock every morning to
+give her lessons. As Jimmie's quest for work grew into a more and more
+disheartening adventure, she had difficulty in getting him out of bed
+in time to prepare and clear away the breakfast for Beulah's arrival.
+After lunch, to which Jimmie scrupulously came home, she was supposed
+to work an hour at her modeling clay. Gertrude, who was doing very
+promising work at the art league, came to the studio twice a week to
+give her instruction in handling it. Later in the afternoon one of the
+aunts or uncles usually appeared with some scheme to divert her.
+Margaret was telling her the stories of the Shakespeare plays, and
+David was trying to make a card player of her, but was not succeeding
+as well as if Albertina had not been brought up a hard shell Baptist,
+who thought card playing a device of the devil's. Peter alone did not
+come, for even when he was in town he was busy in the afternoon.
+
+As soon as her guests were gone, Eleanor hurried through such
+housewifely tasks as were possible of accomplishment at that hour, but
+the strain was telling on her. Jimmie began to realize this and it
+added to his own distress. One night to save her the labor of
+preparing the meal, he took her to an Italian restaurant in the
+neighborhood where the food was honest and palatable, and the service
+at least deft and clean.
+
+Eleanor enjoyed the experience extremely, until an incident occurred
+which robbed her evening of its sweetness and plunged her into the
+purgatory of the child who has inadvertently broken one of its own
+laws.
+
+Among the belongings in the carpetbag, which was no more--having been
+supplanted by a smart little suit-case marked with her initials--was a
+certificate from the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society, duly
+signed by herself, and witnessed by the grammar-school teacher and the
+secretary of the organization. On this certificate (which was
+decorated by many presentations in dim black and white of
+mid-Victorian domestic life, and surmounted by a collection of
+scalloped clouds in which drifted three amateur looking angels amid a
+crowd of more professional cherubim) Eleanor had pledged herself to
+abstain from the use as a beverage of all intoxicating drinks, and
+from the manufacture or traffic in them. She had also subscribed
+herself as willing to make direct and persevering efforts to extend
+the principles and blessings of total abstinence.
+
+"Red ink, Andrea," her Uncle Jimmie had demanded, as the black-eyed
+waiter bent over him, "and ginger ale for the offspring." Eleanor
+giggled. It was fun to be with Uncle Jimmie in a restaurant again. He
+always called for something new and unexpected when he spoke of her to
+the waiter, and he was always what Albertina would consider "very
+comical" when he talked to him. "But stay," he added holding up an
+admonitory finger, "I think we'll give the little one _eau rougie_
+this time. Wouldn't you like _eau rougie_, tinted water, Eleanor, the
+way the French children drink it?"
+
+Unsuspectingly she sipped the mixture of water and ice and sugar, and
+"red ink" from the big brown glass bottle that the glowing waiter set
+before them.
+
+As the meal progressed Jimmie told her that the grated cheese was
+sawdust and almost made her believe it. He showed her how to eat
+spaghetti without cutting it and pointed out to her various Italian
+examples of his object lesson; but she soon realized that in spite of
+his efforts to entertain her, he was really very unhappy.
+
+"I've borrowed all the money I can, Angelface," he confessed finally.
+"Tomorrow's the last day of grace. If I don't land that job at the
+Perkins agency I'll have to give in and tell Peter and David, or wire
+Dad."
+
+"You could get some other kind of a job," Eleanor said; "plumbing or
+clerking or something." On Cape Cod the plumber and the grocer's clerk
+lost no caste because of their calling. "Couldn't you?"
+
+"I _could_ so demean myself, and I will. I'll be a chauffeur, I can
+run a car all right; but the fact remains that by to-morrow
+something's got to happen, or I've got to own up to the bunch."
+
+Eleanor's heart sank. She tried hard to think of something to comfort
+him but she could not. Jimmie mixed her more _eau rougie_ and she
+drank it. He poured a full glass, undiluted, for himself, and held it
+up to the light.
+
+"Well, here's to crime, daughter," he said. "Long may it wave, and us
+with it."
+
+"That isn't really red ink, is it?" she asked. "It's an awfully pretty
+color--like grape juice."
+
+"It is grape juice, my child, if we don't inquire too closely into the
+matter. The Italians are like the French in the guide book, 'fond of
+dancing and light wines.' This is one of the light wines they are fond
+of.--Hello, do you feel sick, child? You're white as a ghost. It's the
+air. As soon as I can get hold of that sacrificed waiter we'll get
+out of here."
+
+Eleanor's sickness was of the spirit, but at the moment she was
+incapable of telling him so, incapable of any sort of speech. A great
+wave of faintness encompassed her. She had broken her pledge. She had
+lightly encouraged a departure from the blessings and principles of
+total abstinence.
+
+That night in her bed she made a long and impassioned apology to her
+Maker for the sin of intemperance into which she had been so
+unwittingly betrayed. She promised Him that she would never drink
+anything that came out of a bottle again. She reviewed sorrowfully her
+many arguments with Albertina--Albertina in the flesh that is--on the
+subject of bottled drinks in general, and decided that again that
+virtuous child was right in her condemnation of any drink, however
+harmless in appearance or nomenclature, that bore the stigma of a
+bottled label.
+
+She knew, however, that something more than a prayer for forgiveness
+was required of her. She was pledged to protest against the evil that
+she had seemingly countenanced. She could not seek the sleep of the
+innocent until that reparation was made. Through the crack of her
+sagging door she saw the light from Jimmie's reading lamp and knew
+that he was still dressed, or clothed at least, with a sufficient
+regard for the conventionalities to permit her intrusion. She rose and
+rebraided her hair and tied a daytime ribbon on it. Then she put on
+her stockings and her blue Japanese kimono--real Japanese, as Aunt
+Beulah explained, made for a Japanese lady of quality--and made her
+way into the studio.
+
+Jimmie was not sitting in the one comfortable studio chair with his
+book under the light and his feet on the bamboo tea table as usual. He
+was not sitting up at all. He was flung on the couch with his face
+buried in the cushions, and his shoulders were shaking. Eleanor seeing
+him thus, forgot her righteous purpose, forgot her pledge to
+disseminate the principles and blessings of abstinence, forgot
+everything but the pitiful spectacle of her gallant Uncle Jimmie in
+grief. She stood looking down at him without quite the courage to
+kneel at his side to give him comfort.
+
+"Uncle Jimmie," she said, "Uncle Jimmie."
+
+At the sound of her voice he put out his hand to her, gropingly, but
+he did not uncover his face or shift his position. She found herself
+smoothing his hair, gingerly at first, but with more and more
+conviction as he snuggled his boyish head closer.
+
+"I'm awfully discouraged," he said in a weak muffled voice. "I'm sorry
+you caught me at it, Baby."
+
+Eleanor put her face down close to his as he turned it to her.
+
+"Everything will be all right," she promised him, "everything will be
+all right. You'll soon get a job--tomorrow maybe."
+
+Then she gathered him close in her angular, tense little arms and held
+him there tightly. "Everything will be all right," she repeated
+soothingly; "now you just put your head here, and have your cry out."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE TEN HUTCHINSONS
+
+
+"My Aunt Margaret has a great many people living in her family,"
+Eleanor wrote to Albertina from her new address on Morningside
+Heights. "She has a mother and a father, and two (2) grandparents, one
+(1) aunt, one (1) brother, one (1) married lady and the boy of the
+lady, I think the married lady is a sister but I do not ask any one,
+oh--and another brother, who does not live here only on Saturdays and
+Sundays. Aunt Margaret makes ten, and they have a man to wait on the
+table. His name is a butler. I guess you have read about them in
+stories. I am taken right in to be one of the family, and I have a
+good time every day now. Aunt Margaret's father is a college teacher,
+and Aunt Margaret's grandfather looks like the father of his country.
+You know who I mean George Washington. They have a piano here that
+plays itself like a sewing machine. They let me do it. They have
+after-dinner coffee and gold spoons to it. I guess you would like to
+see a gold spoon. I did. They are about the size of the tin spoons we
+had in our playhouse. I have a lot of fun with that boy too. At first
+I thought he was very affected, but that is just the way they teach
+him to talk. He is nine and plays tricks on other people. He dares me
+to do things that I don't do, like go down-stairs and steal sugar. If
+Aunt Margaret's mother was my grandma I might steal sugar or plum
+cake. I don't know. Remember the time we took your mother's hermits? I
+do. I would like to see you. You would think this house was quite a
+grand house. It has three (3) flights of stairs and one basement. I
+sleep on the top floor in a dressing room out of Aunt Margaret's only
+it isn't a dressing room. I dress there but no one else can. Aunt
+Margaret is pretty and sings lovely. Uncle David comes here a lot. I
+must close. With love and kisses."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+In her diary she recorded some of the more intimate facts of her new
+existence, such facts as she instinctively guarded from Albertina's
+calculating sense.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Everybody makes fun of me here. I don't care if they do, but I can't
+eat so much at the table when every one is laughing at me. They get
+me to talking and then they laugh. If I could see anything to laugh
+at, I would laugh too. They laugh in a refined way but they laugh.
+They call me Margaret's protegay. They are good to me too. They say to
+my face that I am like a merry wilkins story and too good to be true,
+and New England projuces lots of real art, and I am art, I can't
+remember all the things, but I guess they mean well. Aunt Margaret's
+grandfather sits at the head of the table, and talks about things I
+never heard of before. He knows the govoner and does not like the way
+he parts his hair. I thought all govoners did what they wanted to with
+their hairs or anything and people had to like it because (I used to
+spell because wrong but I spell better now) they was the govoners, but
+it seems not at all.
+
+"Aunt Margaret is lovely to me. We have good times. I meant to like
+Aunt Beulah the best because she has done the most for me but I am
+afrayd I don't. I would not cross my heart and say so. Aunt Margaret
+gives me the lessons now. I guess I learn most as much as I learned I
+mean was taught of Aunt Beulah. Oh dear sometimes I get descouraged
+on account of its being such a funny world and so many diferent people
+in it. And so many diferent feelings. I was afrayd of the hired
+butler, but I am not now."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eleanor had not made a direct change from the Washington Square studio
+to the ample house of the Hutchinsons, and it was as well for her that
+a change in Jimmie's fortunes had taken her back to the Winchester and
+enabled her to accustom herself again to the amenities of gentler
+living. Like all sensitive and impressionable children she took on the
+color of a new environment very quickly. The strain of her studio
+experience had left her a little cowed and unsure of herself, but she
+had brightened up like a flower set in the cheerful surroundings of
+the Winchester and under the influence of Jimmie's restored spirits.
+
+The change had come about on Jimmie's "last day of grace." He had
+secured the coveted position at the Perkins agency at a slight advance
+over the salary he had received at the old place. He had left Eleanor
+in the morning determined to face becomingly the disappointment that
+was in store for him, and to accept the bitter necessity of admitting
+his failure to his friends. He had come back in the late afternoon
+with his fortunes restored, the long weeks of humiliation wiped out,
+and his life back again on its old confident and inspired footing.
+
+He had burst into the studio with his news before he understood that
+Eleanor was not alone, and inadvertently shared the secret with
+Gertrude, who had been waiting for him with the kettle alight and some
+wonderful cakes from "Henri's" spread out on the tea table. The three
+had celebrated by dining together at a festive down-town hotel and
+going back to his studio for coffee. At parting they had solemnly and
+severally kissed one another. Eleanor lay awake in the dark for a long
+time that night softly rubbing the cheek that had been so caressed,
+and rejoicing that the drink Uncle Jimmie had called a high-ball and
+had pledged their health with so assiduously, had come out of two
+glasses instead of a bottle.
+
+Her life at the Hutchinsons' was almost like a life on another planet.
+Margaret was the younger, somewhat delicate daughter of a family of
+rather strident academics. Professor Hutchinson was not dependent on
+his salary to defray the expenses of his elegant establishment, but
+on his father, who had inherited from his father in turn the
+substantial fortune on which the family was founded.
+
+Margaret was really a child of the fairies, but she was considerably
+more fortunate in her choice of a foster family than is usually the
+fate of the foundling. The rigorous altitude of intellect in which she
+was reared served as a corrective to the oversensitive quality of her
+imagination.
+
+Eleanor, who in the more leisurely moments of her life was given to
+visitations from the poetic muse, was inspired to inscribe some lines
+to her on one of the pink pages of the private diary. They ran as
+follows, and even Professor Hutchinson, who occupied the chair of
+English in that urban community of learning that so curiously bisects
+the neighborhood of Harlem, could not have designated Eleanor's
+description of his daughter as one that did not describe.
+
+                "Aunt Margaret is fair and kind,
+                  And very good and tender.
+                She has a very active mind.
+                  Her figure is quite slender.
+
+                "She moves around the room with grace,
+                  Her hands she puts with quickness.
+                Although she wears upon her face
+                  The shadow of a sickness."
+
+It was this "shadow of a sickness," that served to segregate Margaret
+to the extent that was really necessary for her well being. To have
+shared perpetually in the almost superhuman activities of the family
+might have forever dulled that delicate spirit to which Eleanor came
+to owe so much in the various stages of her development.
+
+Margaret put her arm about the child after the ordeal of the first
+dinner at the big table.
+
+"Father does not bite," she said, "but Grandfather does. The others
+are quite harmless. If Grandfather shows his teeth, run for your
+life."
+
+"I don't know where to run to," Eleanor answered seriously, whereupon
+Margaret hugged her. Her Aunt Margaret would have been puzzling to
+Eleanor beyond any hope of extrication, but for the quick imagination
+that unwound her riddles almost as she presented them. For one
+terrible minute Eleanor had believed that Hugh Hutchinson senior did
+bite, he looked so much like some of the worst of the pictures in
+Little Red Riding Hood.
+
+"While you are here I'm going to pretend you're my very own child,"
+Margaret told Eleanor that first evening, "and we'll never, never tell
+anybody all the foolish games we play and the things we say to each
+other. I can just barely manage to be grown up in the bosom of my
+family, and when I am in the company of your esteemed Aunt Beulah, but
+up here in my room, Eleanor, I am never grown up. I play with dolls."
+
+"Oh! do you really?"
+
+"I really do," Margaret said. She opened a funny old chest in the
+corner of the spacious, high studded chamber. "And here are some of
+the dolls that I play with." She produced a manikin dressed primly
+after the manner of eighteen-thirty, prim parted hair over a small
+head festooned with ringlets, a fichu, and mits painted on her
+fingers. "Beulah," she said with a mischievous flash of a grimace at
+Eleanor. "Gertrude,"--a dashing young brunette in riding clothes.
+"Jimmie,"--a curly haired dandy. "David,"--a serious creature with a
+monocle. "I couldn't find Peter," she said, "but we'll make him some
+day out of cotton and water colors."
+
+"Oh! can you make dolls?" Eleanor cried in delight, "real dolls with
+hair and different colored eyes?"
+
+"I can make pretty good ones," Margaret smiled; "manikins like
+these,--a Frenchwoman taught me."
+
+"Oh; did she? And do you play that the dolls talk to each other as if
+they was--were the persons?"
+
+"Do I?" Margaret assembled the four manikins into a smart little
+group. The doll Beulah rose,--on her forefinger. "I can't help
+feeling," mimicked Margaret in a perfect reproduction of Beulah's
+earnest contralto, "that we're wasting our lives,--criminally
+dissipating our forces."
+
+The doll Gertrude put up both hands. "I want to laugh," she cried,
+"won't everybody please stop talking till I've had my laugh out. Thank
+you, thank you."
+
+"Why, that's just like Aunt Gertrude," Eleanor said. "Her voice has
+that kind of a sound like a bell, only more ripply."
+
+"Don't be high-brow," Jimmie's lazy baritone besought with the slight
+burring of the "r's" that Eleanor found so irresistible. "I'm only a
+poor hard-working, business man."
+
+The doll David took the floor deliberately. "We intend to devote the
+rest of our lives," he said, "to the care of our beloved cooperative
+orphan." On that he made a rather over mannered exit, Margaret
+planting each foot down deliberately until she flung him back in his
+box. "That's the kind of a silly your Aunt Margaret is," she
+continued, "but you mustn't ever tell anybody, Eleanor." She clasped
+the child again in one of her warm, sudden embraces, and Eleanor
+squeezing her shyly in return was altogether enraptured with her new
+existence.
+
+"But there isn't any doll for _you_, Aunt Margaret," she cried.
+
+"Oh! yes, there is, but I wasn't going to show her to you unless you
+asked, because she's so nice. I saved the prettiest one of all to be
+myself, not because I believe I'm so beautiful, but--but only because
+I'd like to be, Eleanor."
+
+"I always pretend I'm a princess," Eleanor admitted.
+
+The Aunt Margaret doll was truly a beautiful creation, a little more
+like Marie Antoinette than her namesake, but bearing a not
+inconsiderable resemblance to both, as Margaret pointed out,
+judicially analyzing her features.
+
+Eleanor played with the rabbit doll only at night after this. In the
+daytime she looked rather battered and ugly to eyes accustomed to the
+delicate finish of creatures like the French manikins, but after she
+was tucked away in her cot in the passion flower dressing-room--all of
+Margaret's belongings and decorations were a faint, pinky
+lavender,--her dear daughter Gwendolyn, who impersonated Albertina at
+increasingly rare intervals as time advanced, lay in the hollow of her
+arm and received her sacred confidences and ministrations as usual.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"When my two (2) months are up here I think I should be quite sorry,"
+she wrote in the diary, "except that I'm going to Uncle Peter next,
+and him I would lay me down and dee for, only I never get time enough
+to see him, and know if he wants me to, when I live with him I shall
+know. Well life is very exciting all the time now. Aunt Margaret
+brings me up this way. She tells me that she loves me and that I've
+got beautiful eyes and hair and am sweet. She tells me that all the
+time. She says she wants to love me up enough to last because I never
+had love enough before. I like to be loved. Albertina never loves any
+one, but on Cape Cod nobody loves anybody--not to say so anyway. If a
+man is getting married they say he _likes_ that girl he is going to
+marry. In New York they act as different as they eat. The Hutchinsons
+act different from anybody. They do not know Aunt Margaret has adoptid
+me. Nobody knows I am adoptid but me and my aunts and uncles. Miss
+Prentis and Aunt Beulah's mother when she came home and all the
+bohemiar ladies and all the ten Hutchinsons think I am a little
+visiting girl from the country. It is nobody's business because I am
+supported out of allowances and salaries, but it makes me feel queer
+sometimes. I feel like
+
+                "'Where did you come from, baby dear,
+                Out of the nowhere unto the here?'
+
+Also I made this up out of home sweet home.
+
+            "'Pleasures and palaces where e'er I may roam,
+            Be it ever so humble I wish I had a home.'
+
+"I like having six homes, but I wish everybody knew it. I am nothing
+to be ashamed of. Speaking of homes I asked Aunt Margaret why my aunts
+and uncles did not marry each other and make it easier for every one.
+She said they were not going to get married. That was why they adoptid
+me. 'Am I the same thing as getting married?' I ast. She said no, I
+wasn't except that I was a responsibility to keep them unselfish and
+real. Aunt Beulah doesn't believe in marriage. She thinks its beneth
+her. Aunt Margaret doesn't think she has the health. Aunt Gertrude has
+to have a career of sculpture, Uncle David has got to marry some one
+his mother says to or not at all, and does not like to marry anyway.
+Uncle Jimmie never saw a happy mariage yet and thinks you have a beter
+time in single blesedness. Uncle Peter did not sign in the book where
+they said they would adopt me and not marry. They did not want to ask
+him because he had some trouble once. I wonder what kind! Well I am
+going to be married sometime. I want a house to do the housework in
+and a husband and a backyard full of babies. Perhaps I would rather
+have a hired butler and gold spoons. I don't know yet. Of course I
+would like to have time to write poetry. I can sculpture too, but I
+don't want a career of it because it's so dirty."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Physically Eleanor throve exceedingly during this phase of her
+existence. The nourishing food and regular living, the sympathy
+established between herself and Margaret, the regime of physical
+exercise prescribed by Beulah which she had been obliged guiltily to
+disregard during the strenuous days of her existence in Washington
+Square, all contributed to the accentuation of her material
+well-being. She played with Margaret's nephew, and ran up and down
+stairs on errands for her mother. She listened to the tales related
+for her benefit by the old people, and gravely accepted the attentions
+of the two formidable young men of the family, who entertained her
+with the pianola and excerpts from classic literature and folk lore.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The We Are Sevens meet every Saturday afternoon," she wrote--on a
+yellow page this time--"usually at Aunt Beulah's house. We have tea
+and lots of fun. I am examined on what I have learned but I don't mind
+it much. Physically I am found to be very good by measure and waite.
+My mind is developing alright. I am very bright on the subject of
+poetry. They do not know whether David Copperfield had been a wise
+choice for me, but when I told them the story and talked about it they
+said I had took it right. I don't tell them about the love part of
+Aunt Margaret's bringing up. Aunt Beulah says it would make me self
+conscioush to know that I had such pretty eyes and hair. Aunt Gertrude
+said 'why not mention my teeth to me, then,' but no one seemed to
+think so. Aunt Beulah says not to develope my poetry because the
+theory is to strengthen the weak part of the bridge, and make me do
+arithmetic. 'Drill on the deficiency,' she says. Well I should think
+the love part was a deficiency, but Aunt Beulah thinks love is weak
+and beneath her and any one. Uncle David told me privately that he
+thought I was having the best that could happen to me right now being
+with Aunt Margaret. I didn't tell him that the David doll always gets
+put away in the box with the Aunt Margaret doll and nobody else ever,
+but I should like to have. He thinks she is the best aunt too."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some weeks later she wrote to chronicle a painful scene in which she
+had participated.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I quarreled with the ten Hutchinsons. I am very sorry. They laughed
+at me too much for being a little girl and a Cape Codder, but they
+could if they wanted to, but when they laughed at Aunt Margaret for
+adopting me and the tears came in her eyes I could not bare it. I did
+not let the cat out of the bag, but I made it jump out. The
+Grandfather asked me when I was going back to Cape Cod, and I said I
+hoped never, and then I said I was going to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt
+Gertrude and Uncle David next. They said 'Uncle David--do you mean
+David Bolling?' and I did, so I said 'yes.' Then all the Hutchinsons
+pitched into Aunt Margaret and kept laughing and saying, 'Who is this
+mysterious child anyway, and how is it that her guardians intrust her
+to a crowd of scatter brain youngsters for so long?' and then they
+said 'Uncle David Bolling--_what_ does his mother say?' Then Aunt
+Margaret got very red in the face and the tears started to come, and I
+said 'I am not a mysterious child, and my Uncle David is as much my
+Uncle David as they all are,' and then I said 'My Aunt Margaret has
+got a perfect right to have me intrusted to her at any time, and not
+to be laughed at for it,' and I went and stood in front of her and
+gave her my handkercheve.
+
+"Well I am glad somebody has been told that I am properly adoptid, but
+I am sorry it is the ten Hutchinsons who know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+PETER
+
+
+Uncle Peter treated her as if she were grown up; that was the
+wonderful thing about her visit to him,--if there could be one thing
+about it more wonderful than another. From the moment when he ushered
+her into his friendly, low ceiled drawing-room with its tiers upon
+tiers of book shelves, he admitted her on terms of equality to the
+miraculous order of existence that it was the privilege of her life to
+share. The pink silk coverlet and the elegance of the silver coated
+steampipes at Beulah's; the implacable British stuffiness at the
+Winchester which had had its own stolid charm for the lineal
+descendant of the Pilgrim fathers; the impressively casual atmosphere
+over which the "hired butler" presided distributing after-dinner gold
+spoons, these impressions all dwindled and diminished and took their
+insignificant place in the background of the romance she was living
+and breathing in Peter's jewel box of an apartment on Thirtieth
+Street.
+
+Even to more sophisticated eyes than Eleanor's the place seemed to be
+a realized ideal of charm and homeliness. It was one of the older
+fashioned duplex apartments designed in a more aristocratic decade for
+a more fastidious generation, yet sufficiently adapted to the modern
+insistence on technical convenience. Peter owed his home to his
+married sister, who had discovered it and leased it and settled it and
+suddenly departed for a five years' residence in China with her
+husband, who was as she so often described him, "a blooming
+Englishman, and an itinerant banker." Peter's domestic affairs were
+despatched by a large, motherly Irishwoman, whom Eleanor approved of
+on sight and later came to respect and adore without reservation.
+
+Peter's home was a home with a place in it for her--a place that it
+was perfectly evident was better with her than without her. She even
+slept in the bed that Peter's sister's little girl had occupied, and
+there were pictures on the walls that had been selected for her.
+
+She had been very glad to make her escape from the Hutchinson
+household. Her "quarrel" with them had made no difference in their
+relation to her. To her surprise they treated her with an increase of
+deference after her outburst, and every member of the family,
+excepting possibly Hugh Hutchinson senior, was much more carefully
+polite to her. Margaret explained that the family really didn't mind
+having their daughter a party to the experiment of cooperative
+parenthood. It appealed to them as a very interesting try-out of
+modern educational theory, and their own theories of the independence
+of the individual modified their criticism of Margaret's secrecy in
+the matter, which was the only criticism they had to make since
+Margaret had an income of her own accruing from the estate of the aunt
+for whom she had been named.
+
+"It is very silly of me to be sensitive about being laughed at,"
+Margaret concluded. "I've lived all my life surrounded by people
+suffering from an acute sense of humor, but I never, never, never
+shall get used to being held up to ridicule for things that are not
+funny to me."
+
+"I shouldn't think you would," Eleanor answered devoutly.
+
+In Peter's house there was no one to laugh at her but Peter, and when
+Peter laughed she considered it a triumph. It meant that there was
+something she said that he liked. The welcome she had received as a
+guest in his house and the wonderful evening that succeeded it were
+among the epoch making hours in Eleanor's life. It had happened in
+this wise.
+
+The Hutchinson victoria, for Grandmother Hutchinson still clung to the
+old-time, stately method of getting about the streets of New York, had
+left her at Peter's door at six o'clock of a keen, cool May evening.
+Margaret had not been well enough to come with her, having been
+prostrated by one of the headaches of which she was a frequent
+victim.
+
+The low door of ivory white, beautifully carved and paneled, with its
+mammoth brass knocker, the row of window boxes along the cornice a few
+feet above it, the very look of the house was an experience and an
+adventure to her. When she rang, the door opened almost instantly
+revealing Peter on the threshold with his arms open. He had led her up
+two short flights of stairs--ivory white with carved banisters, she
+noticed, all as immaculately shining with soap and water as a Cape Cod
+interior--to his own gracious drawing-room where Mrs. Finnigan was
+bowing and smiling a warmhearted Irish welcome to her. It was like a
+wonderful story in a book and her eyes were shining with joy as Uncle
+Peter pulled out her chair and she sat down to the first meal in her
+honor. The grown up box of candy at her plate, the grave air with
+which Peter consulted her tastes and her preferences were all a part
+of a beautiful magic that had never quite touched her before.
+
+She had been like a little girl in a dream passing dutifully or
+delightedly through the required phases of her experience, never quite
+believing in its permanence or reality; but her life with Uncle Peter
+was going to be real, and her own. That was what she felt the moment
+she stepped over his threshold.
+
+After their coffee before the open fire--she herself had had "cambric"
+coffee--Peter smoked his cigar, while she curled up in silence in the
+twin to his big cushioned chair and sampled her chocolates. The blue
+flames skimmed the bed of black coals, and finally settled steadily at
+work on them nibbling and sputtering until the whole grate was like a
+basket full of molten light, glowing and golden as the hot sun when it
+sinks into the sea.
+
+Except to offer her the ring about his slender Panatela, and to ask
+her if she were happy, Peter did not speak until he had deliberately
+crushed out the last spark from his stub and thrown it into the fire.
+The ceremony over, he held out his arms to her and she slipped into
+them as if that moment were the one she had been waiting for ever
+since the white morning looked into the window of the lavender
+dressing-room on Morningside Heights, and found her awake and quite
+cold with the excitement of thinking of what the day was to bring
+forth.
+
+"Eleanor," Peter said, when he was sure she was comfortably arranged
+with her head on his shoulder, "Eleanor, I want you to feel at home
+while you are here, really at home, as if you hadn't any other home,
+and you and I belonged to each other. I'm almost too young to be your
+father, but--"
+
+"Oh! are you?" Eleanor asked fervently, as he paused.
+
+"--But I can come pretty near feeling like a father to you if it's a
+father you want. I lost my own father when I was a little older than
+you are now, but I had my dear mother and sister left, and so I don't
+know what it's like to be all alone in the world, and I can't always
+understand exactly how you feel, but you must always remember that I
+want to understand and that I will understand if you tell me. Will you
+remember that, Eleanor?"
+
+"Yes, Uncle Peter," she said soberly; then perhaps for the first time
+since her babyhood she volunteered a caress that was not purely
+maternal in its nature. She put up a shy hand to the cheek so close to
+her own and patted it earnestly. "Of course I've got my grandfather
+and grandmother," she argued, "but they're very old, and not very
+affectionate, either. Then I have all these new aunts and uncles
+pretending," she was penetrating to the core of the matter, Peter
+realized, "that they're just as good as parents. Of course, they're
+just as good as they can be and they take so much trouble that it
+mortifies me, but it isn't just the same thing, Uncle Peter!"
+
+"I know," Peter said, "I know, dear, but you must remember we mean
+well."
+
+"I don't mean you; it isn't you that I think of when I think about my
+co--co-woperative parents, and it isn't any of them specially,--it's
+just the idea of--of visiting around, and being laughed at, and not
+really belonging to anybody."
+
+Peter's arms tightened about her.
+
+"Oh! but you do belong, you do belong. You belong to me, Eleanor."
+
+"That was what I hoped you would say, Uncle Peter," she whispered.
+
+They had a long talk after this, discussing the past and the future;
+the past few months of the experiment from Eleanor's point of view,
+and the future in relation to its failures and successes. Beulah was
+to begin giving her lessons again and she was to take up music with a
+visiting teacher on Peter's piano. (Eleanor had not known it was a
+piano at first, as she had never seen a baby grand before. Peter did
+not know what a triumph it was when she made herself put the question
+to him.)
+
+"If my Aunt Beulah could teach me as much as she does and make it as
+interesting as Aunt Margaret does, I think I would make her feel very
+proud of me," Eleanor said. "I get so nervous saving energy the way
+Aunt Beulah says for me to that I forget all the lesson. Aunt Margaret
+tells too many stories, I guess, but I like them."
+
+"Your Aunt Margaret is a child of God," Peter said devoutly, "in spite
+of her raw-boned, intellectual family."
+
+"Uncle David says she's a daughter of the fairies."
+
+"She's that, too. When Margaret's a year or two older you won't feel
+the need of a mother."
+
+"I don't now," said Eleanor; "only a father,--that I want you to be,
+the way you promised."
+
+"That's done," Peter said. Then he continued musingly, "You'll find
+Gertrude--different. I can't quite imagine her presiding over your
+moral welfare but I think she'll be good at it. She's a good deal of a
+person, you know."
+
+"Aunt Beulah's a good kind of person, too," Eleanor said; "she tries
+hard. The only thing is that she keeps trying to make me express
+myself, and I don't know what that means."
+
+"Let me see if I can tell you," said Peter. "Self-expression is a part
+of every man's duty. Inside we are all trying to be good and true and
+fine--"
+
+"Except the villains," Eleanor interposed. "People like Iago aren't
+trying."
+
+"Well, we'll make an exception of the villains; we're talking of
+people like us, pretty good people with the right instincts. Well
+then, if all the time we're trying to be good and true and fine, we
+carry about a blank face that reflects nothing of what we are feeling
+and thinking, the world is a little worse off, a little duller and
+heavier place for what is going on inside of us."
+
+"Well, how can we make it better off then?" Eleanor inquired
+practically.
+
+"By not thinking too much about it for one thing, except to remember
+to smile, by trying to be just as much at home in it as possible, by
+letting the kind of person we are trying to be show through on the
+outside. By gosh! I wish Beulah could hear me."
+
+"By just not being bashful, do you mean?"
+
+"That's the idea."
+
+"Well, when Aunt Beulah makes me do those dancing exercises, standing
+up in the middle of the floor and telling me to be a flower and
+express myself as a flower, does she just mean not to be bashful?"
+
+"Something like that: she means stop thinking of yourself and go
+ahead--"
+
+"But how can I go ahead with her sitting there watching?"
+
+"I suppose I ought to tell you to imagine that you had the soul of a
+flower, but I haven't the nerve."
+
+"You've got nerve enough to do anything," Eleanor assured him, but she
+meant it admiringly, and seriously.
+
+"I haven't the nerve to go on with a moral conversation in which you
+are getting the better of me at every turn," Peter laughed. "I'm sure
+it's unintentional, but you make me feel like a good deal of an ass,
+Eleanor."
+
+"That means a donkey, doesn't it?"
+
+"It does, and by jove, I believe that you're glad of it."
+
+"I do rather like it," said Eleanor; "of course you don't really feel
+like a donkey to me. I mean I don't make you feel like one, but it's
+funny just pretending that you mean it."
+
+"Oh! woman, woman," Peter cried. "Beulah tried to convey something of
+the fact that you always got the better of every one in your modest
+unassuming way, but I never quite believed it before. At any rate it's
+bedtime, and here comes Mrs. Finnigan to put you to bed. Kiss me good
+night, sweetheart."
+
+Eleanor flung her arms about his neck, in her first moment of
+abandonment to actual emotional self-expression if Peter had only
+known it.
+
+"I will never really get the better of you in my life, Uncle Peter,"
+she promised him passionately.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE OMNISCIENT FOCUS
+
+
+One of the traditional prerogatives of an Omnipotent Power is to look
+down at the activities of earth at any given moment and ascertain
+simultaneously the occupation of any number of people. Thus the Arch
+Creator--that Being of the Supreme Artistic Consciousness--is able to
+peer into segregated interiors at His own discretion and watch the
+plot thicken and the drama develop. Eleanor, who often visualized this
+proceeding, always imagined a huge finger projecting into space,
+cautiously tilting the roofs of the Houses of Man to allow the sweep
+of the Invisible Glance.
+
+Granting the hypothesis of the Divine privilege, and assuming for the
+purposes of this narrative the Omniscient focus on the characters most
+concerned in it, let us for the time being look over the shoulder of
+God and inform ourselves of their various occupations and
+preoccupations of a Saturday afternoon in late June during the hour
+before dinner.
+
+Eleanor, in her little white chamber on Thirtieth Street, was engaged
+in making a pink and green toothbrush case for a going-away gift for
+her Uncle Peter. To be sure she was going away with him when he
+started for the Long Island beach hotel from which he proposed to
+return every day to his office in the city, but she felt that a slight
+token of her affection would be fitting and proper on the eve of their
+joint departure. She was hurrying to get it done that she might steal
+softly into the dining-room and put it on his plate undetected. Her
+eyes were very wide, her brow intent and serious, and her delicate
+lips lightly parted. At that moment she bore a striking resemblance to
+the Botticelli head in Beulah's drawing-room that she had so greatly
+admired.
+
+Of all the people concerned in her history, she was the most
+tranquilly occupied.
+
+Peter in the room beyond was packing his trunk and his suit-case. At
+this precise stage of his proceedings he was trying to make two
+decisions, equally difficult, but concerned with widely different
+departments of his consciousness. He was gravely considering whether
+or not to include among his effects the photograph before him on the
+dressing-table--that of the girl to whom he had been engaged from the
+time he was a Princeton sophomore until her death four years
+later--and also whether or not it would be worth his while to order a
+new suit of white flannels so late in the season. The fact that he
+finally decided against the photograph and in favor of the white
+flannels has nothing to do with the relative importance of the two
+matters thus engrossing him. The health of the human mind depends
+largely on its ability to assemble its irrelevant and incongruous
+problems in dignified yet informal proximity. When he went to his desk
+it was with the double intention of addressing a letter to his tailor,
+and locking the cherished photograph in a drawer; but, the letter
+finished, he still held the picture in his hand and gazed down at it
+mutely and when the discreet knock on his door that constituted the
+announcing of dinner came, he was still sitting motionless with the
+photograph propped up before him.
+
+Up-town, Beulah, whose dinner hour came late, was rather more
+actively, though possibly not more significantly, occupied. She was
+doing her best to evade the wild onslaught of a young man in glasses
+who had been wanting to marry her for a considerable period, and had
+now broken all bounds in a cumulative attempt to inform her of the
+fact.
+
+Though he was assuredly in no condition to listen to reason, Beulah
+was reasoning with him, kindly and philosophically, paying earnest
+attention to the style and structure of her remarks as she did so. Her
+emotions, as is usual on such occasions, were decidedly mixed. She was
+conscious of a very real dismay at her unresponsiveness, a distress
+for the acute pain from which the distraught young man seemed to be
+suffering, and the thrill, which had she only known it, is the
+unfailing accompaniment to the first eligible proposal of marriage. In
+the back of her brain there was also, so strangely is the human mind
+constituted, a kind of relief at being able to use mature logic once
+more, instead of the dilute form of moral dissertation with which she
+tried to adapt herself to Eleanor's understanding.
+
+"I never intend to marry any one," she was explaining gently. "I not
+only never intend to, but I am pledged in a way that I consider
+irrevocably binding never to marry,"--and that was the text from which
+all the rest of her discourse developed.
+
+Jimmie, equally bound by the oath of celibacy, but not equally
+constrained by it apparently, was at the very moment when Beulah was
+so successfully repulsing the familiarity of the high cheek-boned
+young man in the black and white striped tie, occupied in encouraging
+a familiarity of a like nature. That is, he was holding the hand of a
+young woman in the darkened corner of a drawing-room which had been
+entirely unfamiliar to him ten days before, and was about to impress a
+caress on lips that seemed to be ready to meet his with a certain
+degree of accustomed responsiveness. That this was not a peculiarly
+significant incident in Jimmie's career might have been difficult to
+explain, at least to the feminine portion of the group of friends he
+cared most for.
+
+Margaret, dressed for an academic dinner party, in white net with a
+girdle of pale pink and lavender ribbons, had flung herself face
+downward on her bed in reckless disregard of her finery; and because
+it was hot and she was homesick for green fields and the cool
+stretches of dim wooded country, had transported herself in fancy and
+still in her recumbent attitude to the floor of a canoe that was
+drifting down-stream between lush banks of meadow grass studded with
+marsh lilies. After some interval--and shift of position--the way was
+arched overhead with whispering trees, the stars came out one by one,
+showing faintly between waving branches; and she perceived dimly that
+a figure that was vaguely compounded of David and Peter and the
+handsomest of all the young kings of Spain, had quietly taken its
+place in the bow and had busied itself with the paddles,--whereupon
+she was summoned to dinner, where the ten Hutchinsons and their guests
+were awaiting her.
+
+David, the only member of the group whose summer vacation had actually
+begun, was sitting on the broad veranda of an exclusive country club
+several hundreds of miles away from New York and looking soberly into
+the eyes of a blue ribbon bull dog, whose heavy jowl rested on his
+knees. His mother, in one of the most fashionable versions of the
+season's foulards, sleekly corseted and coifed, was sitting less than
+a hundred yards away from him, fanning herself with three inches of
+hand woven fan and contemplating David. In the dressing-room above,
+just alighted from a limousine de luxe, was a raven-haired,
+crafty-eyed ingenue (whose presence David did not suspect or he would
+have recollected a sudden pressing engagement out of her vicinity),
+preening herself for conquest. David's mind, unlike the minds of the
+"other gifted members of the We Are Seven Club," to quote Jimmie's
+most frequent way of referring to them, was to all intents and
+purposes a total blank. He answered monosyllabically his mother's
+questions, patted the dog's beetling forehead and thought of nothing
+at all for practically forty-five minutes. Then he rose, and offering
+his arm to his mother led her gravely to the table reserved for him in
+the dining-room.
+
+Gertrude, in her studio at the top of the house in Fifty-sixth Street
+where she lived with her parents, was putting the finishing touches on
+a faun's head; and a little because she had unconsciously used
+Jimmie's head for her model, and a little because of her conscious
+realization at this moment that the roughly indicated curls over the
+brow were like nobody's in the world but Jimmie's, she was thinking of
+him seriously. She was thinking also of the dinner on a tray that
+would presently be brought up to her, since her mother and father were
+out of town, and of her coming two months with Eleanor and her recent
+inspiration concerning them.
+
+In Colhassett, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the dinner hour and even the
+supper hour were long past. In the commodious kitchen of Eleanor's
+former home two old people were sitting in calico valanced rockers,
+one by either window. The house was a pleasant old colonial structure,
+now badly run down but still marked with that distinction that only
+the instincts of aristocracy can bestow upon a decaying habitation.
+
+A fattish child made her way up the walk, toeing out unnecessarily,
+and let herself in by the back door without knocking.
+
+"Hello, Mis' Chase and Mr. Amos," she said, seating herself in a
+straight backed, yellow chair, and swinging her crossed foot
+nonchalantly, "I thought I would come in to inquire about Eleanor. Ma
+said that she heard that she was coming home to live again. Is she,
+Mr. Amos?"
+
+Albertina was not a peculiar favorite of Eleanor's grandfather. Amos
+Chase had ideas of his own about the proper bringing up of children,
+and the respect due from them to their elders. Also Albertina's father
+had come from "poor stock." There was a strain of bad blood in her.
+The women of the Weston families hadn't always "behaved themselves."
+He therefore answered this representative of the youngest generation
+rather shortly.
+
+"I don't know nothing about it," he said.
+
+"Why, father," the querulous old voice of Grandmother Chase protested,
+"you know she's comin' home somewhere 'bout the end of July, she and
+one of her new aunties and a hired girl they're bringing along to do
+the work. I don't see why you can't answer the child's question."
+
+"I don't know as I'm obligated to answer any questions that anybody
+sees fit to put to me."
+
+"Well, I _be_. Albertina, pass me my glasses from off the
+mantel-tree-shelf, and that letter sticking out from behind the clock
+and I'll read what she says."
+
+Albertina, with a reproachful look at Mr. Amos, who retired coughing
+exasperatedly behind a paper that he did not read, allowed herself to
+be informed through the medium of a letter from Gertrude and a
+postscript from Eleanor of the projected invasion of the Chase
+household.
+
+"I should think you'd rather have Eleanor come home by herself than
+bringing a strange woman and a hired girl," Albertina contributed a
+trifle tartly. The distinction of a hired girl in the family was one
+which she had long craved on her own account.
+
+"All nonsense, I call it," the old man ejaculated.
+
+"Well, Eleena, she writes that she can't get away without one of 'em
+comin' along with her and I guess we can manage someways. I dunno what
+work city help will make in this kitchen. You can't expect much from
+city help. They ain't clean like home folks. I shall certainly be
+dretful pleased to see Eleena, and so will her grandpa--in spite o'
+the way he goes on about it."
+
+A snort came from the region of the newspaper.
+
+"I shouldn't think you'd feel as if you had a grandchild now that six
+rich people has adopted her," Albertina suggested helpfully.
+
+"It's a good thing for the child," her grandmother said. "I'm so lame
+I couldn't do my duty by her. Old folks is old folks, and they can't
+do for others like young ones. I'd d'ruther have had her adopted by
+one father and mother instead o' this passel o' young folks passing
+her around among themselves, but you can't have what you'd d'ruther
+have in this world. You got to take what comes and be thankful."
+
+"Did she write you about having gold coffee spoons at her last place?"
+Albertina asked. "I think they was probably gilded over like ice-cream
+spoons, and she didn't know the difference. I guess she has got a lot
+of new clothes. Well, I'll have to be getting along. I'll come in
+again."
+
+At the precise moment that the door closed behind Albertina, the clock
+in Peter Stuyvesant's apartment in New York struck seven and Eleanor,
+in a fresh white dress and blue ribbons, slipped into her chair at the
+dinner table and waited with eyes blazing with excitement for Peter to
+make the momentous discovery of the gift at his plate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERTRUDE HAS TROUBLE WITH HER BEHAVIOR
+
+
+"Dear Uncle Peter," Eleanor wrote from Colhassett when she had been
+established there under the new regime for a week or more. "I slapped
+Albertina's face. I am very awfully sorry, but I could not help it.
+Don't tell Aunt Margaret because it is so contrary to her teachings
+and also the golden rule, but she was more contrary to the golden rule
+that I was. I mean Albertina. What do you think she said? She said
+Aunt Gertrude was homely and an old maid, and the hired girl was
+homely too. Well, I think she is, but I am not going to have Albertina
+think so. Aunt Gertrude is pretty with those big eyes and ink like
+hair and lovely teeth and one dimple. Albertina likes hair fuzzed all
+over faces and blonds. Then she said she guessed I wasn't your
+favorite, and that the gold spoons were most likely tin gilded over. I
+don't know what you think about slapping. Will you please write and
+say what you think? You know I am anxsuch to do well. But I think I
+know as much as Albertina about some things. She uster treat me like a
+dog, but it is most a year now since I saw her before.
+
+"Well, here we are, Aunt Gertrude and me, too. Grandpa did not like
+her at first. She looked so much like summer folks, and acted that
+way, too. He does not agree with summer folks, but she got him talking
+about foreign parts and that Spanish girl that made eyes at him, and
+nearly got him away from Grandma, and the time they were wrecked going
+around the horn, and showing her dishes and carvings from China. Now
+he likes her first rate. She laughs all the time. Grandma likes her
+too, but not when Grandpa tells her about that girl in Spain.
+
+"We eat in the dining-room, and have lovely food, only Grandpa does
+not like it, but we have him a pie now for breakfast,--his own pie
+that he can eat from all the time and he feels better. Aunt Gertrude
+is happy seeing him eat it for breakfast and claps her hands when he
+does it, only he doesn't see her.
+
+"She is teaching me more manners, and to swim, and some French. It is
+vacation and I don't have regular lessons, the way I did while we
+were on Long Island.
+
+"Didn't we have a good time in that hotel? Do you remember the night I
+stayed up till ten o'clock and we sat on the beach and talked? I do. I
+love you very much. I think it is nice to love anybody. Only I miss
+you. I would miss you more if I believed what Albertina said about my
+not being your favorite. I am.
+
+"I wish you could come down here. Uncle Jimmie is coming and then I
+don't know what Albertina will say.
+
+"About teaching me. Aunt Gertrude's idea of getting me cultivated is
+to read to me from the great Masters of literature and funny books
+too, like Mark Twain and the Nonsense Thology. Then I say what I think
+of them, and she just lets me develop along those lines, which is
+pretty good for summer.
+
+"Here is a poem I wrote. I love you best.
+
+                "The sun and wind are on the sea,
+                  The waves are clear and blue,
+                This is the place I like to be,
+                  If I could just have you.
+
+                "The insects chirrup in the grass,
+                  The birds sing in the tree,
+                And oh! how quick the time would pass
+                  If you were here with me."
+
+"What do you think of slapping, Aunt Gertrude?" Eleanor asked one
+evening when they were walking along the hard beach that the receding
+tide had left cool and firm for their pathway, and the early moon had
+illumined for them. "Do you think it's awfully bad to slap any one?"
+
+"I wouldn't slap you, if that's what you mean, Eleanor."
+
+"Would you slap somebody your own size and a little bigger?"
+
+"I might under extreme provocation."
+
+"I thought perhaps you would," Eleanor sighed with a gasp of relieved
+satisfaction.
+
+"I don't believe in moral suasion entirely, Eleanor," Gertrude tried
+to follow Eleanor's leads, until she had in some way satisfied the
+child's need for enlightenment on the subject under discussion. It was
+not always simple to discover just what Eleanor wanted to know, but
+Gertrude had come to believe that there was always some excellent
+reason for her wanting to know it. "I think there are some quarrels
+that have to be settled by physical violence."
+
+Eleanor nodded. Then,
+
+"What about refinement?" she asked unexpectedly. "I want to bring
+myself up good when--when all of my aunts and uncles are too busy, or
+don't know. I want to grow up, and be ladylike and a credit, and I'm
+getting such good culture that I think I ought to, but--I get worried
+about my refinement. City refinement is different from country
+refinement."
+
+"Refinement isn't a thing that you can worry about," Gertrude began
+slowly. She realized perhaps better than any of the others, being a
+better balanced, healthier creature than either Beulah or Margaret,
+that there were serious defects in the scheme of cooperative
+parentage. Eleanor, thanks to the overconscientious digging about her
+roots, was acquiring a New England self-consciousness about her
+processes. A child, Gertrude felt, should be handed a code ready made
+and should be guided by it without question until his maturer
+experience led him to modify it. The trouble with trying to explain
+this to Eleanor was that she had already had too many things
+explained to her, and the doctrine of unselfconsciousness can not be
+inculcated by an exploitation of it. "If you are naturally a fine
+person your instinct will be to do the fine thing. You must follow it
+when you feel the instinct and not think about it between times."
+
+"That's Uncle Peter's idea," Eleanor said, "that not thinking. Well,
+I'll try--but you and Uncle Peter didn't have six different parents
+and a Grandpa and Grandma and Albertina all criticizing your
+refinement in different ways. Don't you ever have any trouble with
+your behavior, Aunt Gertrude?"
+
+Gertrude laughed. The truth was that she was having considerable
+trouble with her behavior since Jimmie's arrival two days before. She
+had thought to spend her two months with Eleanor on Cape Cod helping
+the child to relate her new environment to her old, while she had the
+benefit of her native air and the freedom of a rural summer. She also
+felt that one of their number ought to have a working knowledge of
+Eleanor's early surroundings and habits. She had meant to put herself
+and her own concerns entirely aside. If she had a thought for any one
+but Eleanor she meant it to be for the two old people whose guest she
+had constituted herself. She explained all this to Jimmie a day or two
+before her departure, and to her surprise he had suggested that he
+spend his own two vacation weeks watching the progress of her
+experiment. Before she was quite sure of the wisdom of allowing him to
+do so she had given him permission to come. Jimmie was part of her
+trouble. Her craving for isolation and undiscovered country; her
+eagerness to escape with her charge to some spot where she would not
+be subjected to any sort of familiar surveillance, were all a part of
+an instinct to segregate herself long enough to work out the problem
+of Jimmie and decide what to do about it. This she realized as soon as
+he arrived on the spot. She realized further that she had made
+practically no progress in the matter, for this curly headed young
+man, bearing no relation to anything that Gertrude had decided a young
+man should be, was rapidly becoming a serious menace to her peace of
+mind, and her ideal of a future lived for art alone. She had
+definitely begun to realize this on the night when Jimmie, in his
+exuberance at securing his new job, had seized her about the waist and
+kissed her on the lips. She had thought a good deal about that kiss,
+which came dangerously near being her first one. She was too clever,
+too cool and aloof, to have had many tentative love-affairs. Later, as
+she softened and warmed and gathered grace with the years she was
+likely to seem more alluring and approachable to the gregarious male.
+Now she answered her small interlocutor truthfully.
+
+"Yes, Eleanor, I do have a whole lot of trouble with my behavior. I'm
+having trouble with it today, and this evening," she glanced up at the
+moon, which was seemingly throwing out conscious waves of effulgence,
+"I expect to have more," she confessed.
+
+"Oh! do you?" asked Eleanor, "I'm sorry I can't sit up with you then
+and help you. You--you don't expect to be--provocated to _slap_
+anybody, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't, but as things are going I almost wish I did," Gertrude
+answered, not realizing that before the evening was over there would
+be one person whom she would be ruefully willing to slap several times
+over.
+
+As they turned into the village street from the beach road they met
+Jimmie, who had been having his after-dinner pipe with Grandfather
+Amos, with whom he had become a prime favorite. With him was
+Albertina, toeing out more than ever and conversing more than
+blandly.
+
+"This virtuous child has been urging me to come after Eleanor and
+remind her that it is bedtime," Jimmie said, indicating the pink
+gingham clad figure at his side. "She argues that Eleanor is some six
+months younger than she and ought to be in bed first, and personally
+she has got to go in the next fifteen minutes."
+
+"It's pretty hot weather to go to bed in," Albertina said. "Miss
+Sturgis, if I can get my mother to let me stay up half an hour more,
+will you let Eleanor stay up?"
+
+Just beyond her friend, in the shadow of her ample back, Eleanor was
+making gestures intended to convey the fact that sitting up any longer
+was abhorrent to her.
+
+"Eleanor needs her sleep to-night, I think," Gertrude answered,
+professionally maternal.
+
+"I brought Albertina so that our child might go home under convoy,
+while you and I were walking on the beach," Jimmie suggested.
+
+As the two little girls fell into step, the beginning of their
+conversation drifted back to the other two, who stood watching them
+for a moment.
+
+"I thought I'd come over to see if you was willing to say you were
+sorry," Albertina began. "My face stayed red in one spot for two hours
+that day after you slapped me."
+
+"I'm not sorry," Eleanor said ungraciously, "but I'll say that I am,
+if you've come to make up."
+
+"Well, we won't say any more about it then," Albertina conceded. "Are
+Miss Sturgis and Mr. Sears going together, or are they just friends?"
+
+"Isn't that Albertina one the limit?" Jimmie inquired, with a piloting
+hand under Gertrude's elbow. "She told me that she and Eleanor were
+mad, but she didn't want to stay mad because there was more going on
+over here than there was at her house and she liked to come over."
+
+"I'm glad Eleanor slapped her," Gertrude said; "still I'm sorry our
+little girl has uncovered the clay feet of her idol. She's through
+with Albertina for good."
+
+"Do you know, Gertrude," Jimmy said, as they set foot on the
+glimmering beach, "you don't seem a bit natural lately. You used to be
+so full of the everlasting mischief. Every time you opened your mouth
+I dodged for fear of being spiked. Yet here you are just as docile as
+other folks."
+
+"Don't you like me--as well?" Gertrude tried her best to make her
+voice sound as usual.
+
+"Better," Jimmie swore promptly; then he added a qualifying--"I
+guess."
+
+"Don't you know?" But she didn't allow him the opportunity to answer.
+"I'm in a transition period, Jimmie," she said. "I meant to be such a
+good parent to Eleanor and correct all the evil ways into which she
+has fallen as a result of all her other injudicious training, and,
+instead of that, I'm doing nothing but think of myself and my own
+hankerings and yearnings and such. I thought I could do so much for
+the child."
+
+"That's the way we all think till we tackle her and then we find it
+quite otherwise and even more so. Tell me about your hankerings and
+yearnings."
+
+"Tell me about your job, Jimmie."
+
+And for a little while they found themselves on safe and familiar
+ground again. Jimmie's new position was a very satisfactory one. He
+found himself associated with men of solidity and discernment, and for
+the first time in his business career he felt himself appreciated and
+stimulated by that appreciation to do his not inconsiderable best.
+Gertrude was the one woman--Eleanor had not yet attained the inches
+for that classification--to whom he ever talked business.
+
+"Now, at last, I feel that I've got my feet on the earth, Gertrude; as
+if the stuff that was in me had a chance to show itself, and you don't
+know what a good feeling that is after you've been marked trash by
+your family and thrown into the dust heap."
+
+"I'm awfully glad, Jimmie."
+
+"I know you are, 'Trude. You're an awfully good pal. It isn't
+everybody I'd talk to like this. Let's sit down."
+
+The moonlight beat down upon them in floods of sentient palpitating
+glory. Little breathy waves sought the shore and whispered to it. The
+pines on the breast of the bank stirred softly and tenderly.
+
+"Lord, what a night," Jimmie said, and began burying her little white
+hand in the beach sand. His breath was not coming quite evenly. "Now
+tell me about your job," he said.
+
+"I don't think I want to talk about my job tonight."
+
+"What do you want to talk about?"
+
+"I don't know." There was no question about her voice sounding as
+usual this time.
+
+Jimmie brushed the sand slowly away from the buried hand and covered
+it with his own. He drew nearer, his face close, and closer to hers.
+Gertrude closed her eyes. It was coming, it was coming and she was
+glad. That silly old vow of celibacy, her silly old thoughts about
+art. What was art? What was anything with the arms of the man you
+loved closing about you. His lips were on hers.
+
+Jimmie drew a sharp breath, and let her go.
+
+"Gertrude," he said, "I'm incorrigible. I ought to be spanked. I'd
+make love to--Eleanor's grandmother if I had her down here on a night
+like this. Will you forgive me?"
+
+Gertrude got to her feet a little unsteadily, but she managed a
+smile.
+
+"It's only the moon," she said, "and--and young blood. I think
+Grandfather Amos would probably affect me the same way."
+
+Jimmie's momentary expression of blankness passed and Gertrude did not
+press her advantage. They walked home in silence.
+
+"It's awfully companionable to realize that you also are human,
+'Trude," he hazarded on the doorstep.
+
+Gertrude put a still hand into his, which is a way of saying "Good
+night," that may be more formal than any other.
+
+"The Colonel's lady, and July O'Grady," she quoted lightly. "Good
+night, Jimmie."
+
+Up-stairs in her great chamber under the eaves, Eleanor was composing
+a poem which she copied carefully on a light blue page of her private
+diary. It read as follows:
+
+                "To love, it is the saddest thing,
+                  When friendship proves unfit,
+                For lots of sadness it will bring,
+                  When e'er you think of it.
+
+                Alas! that friends should prove untrue
+                  And disappoint you so.
+                Because you don't know what to do,
+                  And hardly where to go."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MADAM BOLLING
+
+
+"Is this the child, David?"
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+Eleanor stared impassively into the lenses of Mrs. Bolling's
+lorgnette.
+
+"This is my mother, Eleanor."
+
+Eleanor courtesied as her Uncle Jimmie had taught her, but she did not
+take her eyes from Mrs. Bolling's face.
+
+"Not a bad-looking child. I hate this American fashion of dressing
+children like French dolls, in bright colors and smart lines. The
+English are so much more sensible. An English country child would have
+cheeks as red as apples. How old are you?"
+
+"Eleven years old my next birthday."
+
+"I should have thought her younger, David. Have her call me madam. It
+sounds better."
+
+"Very well, mother. I'll teach her the ropes when the strangeness
+begins to wear off. This kind of thing is all new to her, you know."
+
+"She looks it. Give her the blue chamber and tell Mademoiselle to
+take charge of her. You say you want her to have lessons for so many
+hours a day. Has she brains?"
+
+"She's quite clever. She writes verses, she models pretty well,
+Gertrude says. It's too soon to expect any special aptitude to
+develop."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to discover your philanthropic tendencies, David. I
+never knew you had any before, but this seems to me a very doubtful
+undertaking. You take a child like this from very plain surroundings
+and give her a year or two of life among cultivated and well-to-do
+people, just enough for her to acquire a taste for extravagant living
+and associations. Then what becomes of her? You get tired of your
+bargain. Something else comes on the docket. You marry--and then what
+becomes of your protegee? She goes back to the country, a thoroughly
+unsatisfied little rustic, quite unfitted to be the wife of the farmer
+for whom fate intended her."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't, mother," David said, with an uneasy glance at
+Eleanor's pale face, set in the stoic lines he remembered so well from
+the afternoon of his first impression of her. "She's a sensitive
+little creature."
+
+"Nonsense. It never hurts anybody to have a plain understanding of his
+position in the world. I don't know what foolishness you romantic
+young people may have filled her head with. It's just as well she
+should hear common sense from me and I intend that she shall."
+
+"I've explained to you, mother, that this child is my legal and moral
+responsibility and will be partly at least under my care until she
+becomes of age. I want her to be treated as you'd treat a child of
+mine if I had one. If you don't, I can't have her visit us again. I
+shall take her away with me somewhere. Bringing her home to you this
+time is only an experiment."
+
+"She'll have a much more healthful and normal experience with us than
+she's had with any of the rest of your violent young set, I'll be
+bound. She'll probably be useful, too. She can look out for Zaidee--I
+never say that name without irritation--but it's the only name the
+little beast will answer to. Do you like dogs, child?"
+
+Eleanor started at the suddenness of the question, but did not reply
+to it. Mrs. Bolling waited and David looked at her expectantly.
+
+"My mother asked you if you liked dogs, Eleanor; didn't you
+understand?"
+
+Eleanor opened her lips as if to speak and then shut them again
+firmly.
+
+"Your protegee is slightly deaf, David," his mother assured him.
+
+"You can tell her 'yes,'" Eleanor said unexpectedly to David. "I like
+dogs, if they ain't treacherous."
+
+"She asked you the question," David said gravely; "this is her house,
+you know. It is she who deserves consideration in it."
+
+"Why can't I talk to you about her, the way she does about me?"
+Eleanor demanded. "She can have consideration if she wants it, but she
+doesn't think I'm any account. Let her ask you what she wants and I'll
+tell you."
+
+"Eleanor," David remonstrated, "Eleanor, you never behaved like this
+before. I don't know what's got into her, mother."
+
+"She merely hasn't any manners. Why should she have?"
+
+Eleanor fixed her big blue eyes on the lorgnette again.
+
+"If it's manners to talk the way you do to your own children and
+strange little girls, why, then I don't want any," she said. "I guess
+I'll be going," she added abruptly and turned toward the door.
+
+David took her by the shoulders and brought her right about face.
+
+"Say good-by to mother," he said sternly.
+
+"Good-by, ma'am--madam," Eleanor said and courtesied primly.
+
+"Tell Mademoiselle to teach her a few things before the next audience,
+David, and come back to me in fifteen minutes. I have something
+important to talk over with you."
+
+David stood by the open door of the blue chamber half an hour later
+and watched Eleanor on her knees, repacking her suit-case. Her face
+was set in pale determined lines, and she looked older and a little
+sick. Outside it was blowing a September gale, and the trees were
+waving desperate branches in the wind. David had thought that the
+estate on the Hudson would appeal to the little girl. It had always
+appealed to him so much, even though his mother's habits of migration
+with the others of her flock at the different seasons had left him so
+comparatively few associations with it. He had thought she would like
+the broad sweeping lawns and the cherubim fountain, the apple orchard
+and the kitchen garden, and the funny old bronze dog at the end of the
+box hedge. When he saw how she was occupied, he understood that it was
+not her intention to stay and explore these things.
+
+"Eleanor," he said, stepping into the room suddenly, "what are you
+doing with your suit-case? Didn't Mademoiselle unpack it for you?" He
+was close enough now to see the signs of tears she had shed.
+
+"Yes, Uncle David."
+
+"Why are you packing it again?"
+
+Her eyes fell and she tried desperately to control a quivering lip.
+
+"Because I am--I want to go back."
+
+"Back where?"
+
+"To Cape Cod."
+
+"Why, Eleanor?"
+
+"I ain't wanted," she said, her head low. "I made up my mind to go
+back to my own folks. I'm not going to be adopted any more."
+
+David led her to the deep window-seat and made her sit facing him. He
+was too wise to attempt a caress with this issue between them.
+
+"Do you think that's altogether fair to me?" he asked presently.
+
+"I guess it won't make much difference to you. Something else will
+come along."
+
+"Do you think it will be fair to your other aunts and uncles who have
+given so much care and thought to your welfare?"
+
+"They'll get tired of their bargain."
+
+"If they do get tired of their bargain it will be because they've
+turned out to be very poor sports. I've known every one of them a long
+time, and I've never known them to show any signs of poor
+sportsmanship yet. If you run away without giving them their chance to
+make good, it will be you who are the poor sport."
+
+"She said you would marry and get tired of me, and I would have to go
+back to the country. If you marry and Uncle Jimmie marries--then Uncle
+Peter will marry, and--"
+
+"You'd still have your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude," David
+could not resist making the suggestion.
+
+"They could do it, too. If one person broke up the vow, I guess they
+all would. Misfortunes never come singly."
+
+"But even if we did, Eleanor, even if we all married, we'd still
+regard you as our own, our child, our charge."
+
+"_She_ said you wouldn't." The tears came now, and David gathered the
+little shaking figure to his breast. "I don't want to be the wife of
+the farmer for whom fate intended me," she sobbed. "I want to marry
+somebody refined with extravagant living and associations."
+
+"That's one of the things we are bringing you up for, my dear." This
+aspect of the case occurred to David for the first time, but he
+realized its potency. "You mustn't take mother too seriously. Just
+jolly her along a little and you'll soon get to be famous friends.
+She's never had any little girls of her own, only my brother and me,
+and she doesn't know quite how to talk to them."
+
+"The Hutchinsons had a hired butler and gold spoons, and they didn't
+think I was the dust beneath their feet. I don't know what to say to
+her. I said ain't, and I wasn't refined, and I'll only just be a
+disgrace to you. I'd rather go back to Cape Cod, and go out to work,
+and stand Albertina and everything."
+
+"If you think it's the square thing to do," David said slowly, "you
+may go, Eleanor. I'll take you to New York to-morrow and get one of
+the girls to take you to Colhassett. Of course, if you do that it will
+put me in rather an awkward position. The others have all had you for
+two months and made good on the proposition. I shall have to admit
+that I couldn't even keep you with me twenty-four hours. Peter and
+Jimmie got along all right, but I couldn't handle you at all. As a
+cooperative parent, I'm such a failure that the whole experiment goes
+to pieces through me."
+
+"Not you--her."
+
+"Well, it's the same thing,--you couldn't stand the surroundings I
+brought you to. You couldn't even be polite to my mother for my
+sake."
+
+"I--never thought of that, Uncle David."
+
+"Think of it now for a few minutes, won't you, Eleanor?"
+
+The rain was beginning to lash the windows, and to sweep the lawn in
+long slant strokes. The little girl held up her face as if it could
+beat through the panes on it.
+
+"I thought," she said slowly, "that after Albertina I wouldn't _take_
+anything from anybody. Uncle Peter says that I'm just as good as
+anybody, even if I have been out to work. He said that all I had to do
+was just to stand up to people."
+
+"There are a good many different ways of standing up to people,
+Eleanor. Be sure you've got the right way and then go ahead."
+
+"I guess I ought to have been politer," Eleanor said slowly. "I ought
+to have thought that she was your own mother. You couldn't help the
+way she acted, o' course."
+
+"The way you acted is the point, Eleanor."
+
+Eleanor reflected.
+
+"I'll act different if you want me to, Uncle David," she said, "and I
+won't go and leave you."
+
+"That's my brave girl. I don't think that I altogether cover myself
+with glory in an interview with my mother," he added. "It isn't the
+thing that I'm best at, I admit."
+
+"You did pretty good," Eleanor consoled him. "I guess she makes you
+kind of bashful the way she does me," from which David gathered with
+an odd sense of shock that Eleanor felt there was something to
+criticize in his conduct, if she had permitted herself to look for
+it.
+
+"I know what I'll do," Eleanor decided dreamily with her nose against
+the pane. "I'll just pretend that she's Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt, and then
+whatever she does, I shan't care. I'll know that I'm the strongest and
+could hit her if I had a mind to, and then I shan't want to."
+
+David contemplated her gravely for several seconds.
+
+"By the time you grow up, Eleanor," he said finally, "you will have
+developed all your cooperative parents into fine strong characters.
+Your educational methods are wonderful."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The dog got nearly drownded today in the founting," Eleanor wrote.
+"It is a very little dog about the size of Gwendolyn. It was out with
+Mademoiselle, and so was I, learning French on a garden seat. It
+teetered around on the edge of the big wash basin--the founting looks
+like a wash basin, and suddenly it fell in. I waded right in and got
+it, but it slipped around so I couldn't get it right away. It looked
+almost too dead to come to again, but I gave it first aid to the
+drownded the way Uncle Jimmie taught me to practicing on Gwendolyn.
+When I got it fixed I looked up and saw Uncle David's mother coming. I
+took the dog and gave it to her. I said, 'Madam, here's your dog.'
+Mademoiselle ran around ringing her hands and talking about it. Then I
+went up to Mrs. Bolling's room, and we talked. I told her how to make
+mustard pickles, and how my mother's grandpa's relation came over in
+the Mayflower, and about our single white lilac bush, and she's going
+to get one and make the pickles. Then I played double Canfield with
+her for a while. I'm glad I didn't go home before I knew her better.
+When she acts like Mrs. O'Farrel's aunt I pretend she is her, and we
+don't quarrel. She says does Uncle David go much to see Aunt Beulah,
+and I say, not so often as Uncle Jimmie does. Then she says does he go
+to see Aunt Margaret, and I say that he goes to see Uncle Peter the
+most. Well, if he doesn't he almost does. You can't tell Mrs. Madam
+Bolling that you won't tattle, because she would think the worst."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eleanor grew to like Mademoiselle. She was the aging, rather wry
+faced Frenchwoman who had been David's young brother's governess and
+had made herself so useful to Mrs. Bolling that she was kept always on
+the place, half companion and half resident housekeeper. She was glad
+to have a child in charge again, and Eleanor soon found that her
+crooked features and severe high-shouldered back that had somewhat
+intimidated her at first, actually belonged to one of the kindest
+hearted creatures in the world.
+
+Paris and Colhassett bore very little resemblance to each other, the
+two discovered. To be sure there were red geraniums every alternating
+year in the gardens of the Louvre, and every year in front of the
+Sunshine Library in Colhassett. The residents of both places did a
+great deal of driving in fine weather. In Colhassett they drove on the
+state highway, recently macadamized to the dismay of the taxpayers who
+did not own horses or automobiles. In Paris they drove out to the Bois
+by way of the Champs Elysees. In Colhassett they had only one
+ice-cream saloon, but in Paris they had a good many of them
+out-of-doors in the parks and even on the sidewalk, and there you
+could buy all kinds of sirups and 'what you call cordials' and
+_aperitifs_; but the two places on the whole were quite different. The
+people were different, too. The people of Colhassett were all
+religious and thought it was sinful to play cards on Sundays.
+Mademoiselle said she always felt wicked when she played them on a
+week day.
+
+"I think of my mother," she said; "she would say 'Juliette, what will
+you say to the Lord when he knows that you have been playing cards on
+a working day. Playing cards is for Sunday.'"
+
+"The Lord that they have in Colhassett is not like that," Eleanor
+stated without conscious irreverence.
+
+"She is a vary fonny child, madam," Mademoiselle answered Mrs.
+Bolling's inquiry. "She has taste, but no--experience even of the most
+ordinary. She cooks, but she does no embroidery. She knits and knows
+no games to play. She has a good brain, but Mon Dieu, no one has
+taught her to ask questions with it."
+
+"She has had lessons this year from some young Rogers graduates, very
+intelligent girls. I should think a year of that kind of training
+would have had its effect." Mrs. Bolling's finger went into every pie
+in her vicinity with unfailing direction.
+
+"Lessons, yes, but no teaching. If she were not vary intelligent I
+think she would have suffered for it. The public schools they did
+somesing, but so little to elevate--to encourage."
+
+Thus in a breath were Beulah's efforts as an educator disposed of.
+
+"Would you like to undertake the teaching of that child for a year?"
+Mrs. Bolling asked thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh! but yes, madam."
+
+"I think I'll make the offer to David."
+
+Mrs. Bolling was unsympathetic but she was thorough. She liked to see
+things properly done. Since David and his young friends had undertaken
+a venture so absurd, she decided to lend them a helping hand with it.
+Besides, now that she had no children of her own in the house,
+Mademoiselle was practically eating her head off. Also it had
+developed that David was fond of the child, so fond of her that to
+oppose that affection would have been bad policy, and Mrs. Bolling was
+politic when she chose to be. She chose to be politic now, for
+sometime during the season she was going to ask a very great favor of
+David, and she hoped, that by first being extraordinarily complaisant
+and kind and then by bringing considerable pressure to bear upon him,
+he would finally do what he was asked. The favor was to provide
+himself with a father-in-law, and that father-in-law the
+multi-millionaire parent of the raven-haired, crafty-eyed ingenue, who
+had begun angling for him that June night at the country club.
+
+She made the suggestion to David on the eve of the arrival of all of
+Eleanor's guardians for the week-end. Mrs. Bolling had invited a
+house-party comprised of the associated parents as a part of her
+policy of kindness before the actual summoning of her forces for the
+campaign she was about to inaugurate.
+
+David was really touched by his mother's generosity concerning
+Eleanor. He had been agreeably surprised at the development of the
+situation between the child and his mother. He had been obliged to go
+into town the day after Eleanor's first unfortunate encounter with her
+hostess, and had hurried home in fear and trembling to try to smooth
+out any tangles in the skein of their relationship that might have
+resulted from a day in each other's vicinity. After hurrying over the
+house and through the grounds in search of her he finally discovered
+the child companionably currying a damp and afflicted Pekinese in his
+mother's sitting-room, and engaged in a grave discussion of the
+relative merits of molasses and sugar as a sweetening for Boston baked
+beans.
+
+It was while they were having their after-dinner coffee in the
+library, for which Eleanor had been allowed to come down, though
+nursery supper was the order of the day in the Bolling establishment,
+that David told his friends of his mother's offer.
+
+"Of course, we decided to send her to school when she was twelve
+anyway," he said. "The idea was to keep her among ourselves for two
+years to establish the parental tie, or ties I should say. If she is
+quartered here with Mademoiselle we could still keep in touch with her
+and she would be having the advantage of a year's steady tuition under
+one person, and we'd be relieved--" a warning glance from Margaret,
+with an almost imperceptible inclination of her head in the direction
+of Beulah, caused him to modify the end of his sentence--"of the
+responsibility--for her physical welfare."
+
+"Mentally and morally," Gertrude cut in, "the bunch would still
+supervise her entirely."
+
+Jimmie, who was sitting beside her, ran his arm along the back of her
+chair affectionately, and then thought better of it and drew it away.
+He was, for some unaccountable reason, feeling awkward and not like
+himself. There was a girl in New York, with whom he was not in the
+least in love, who had recently taken it upon herself to demonstrate
+unmistakably that she was not in love with him. There was another girl
+who insisted on his writing her every day. Here was Gertrude, who
+never had any time for him any more, absolutely without enthusiasm at
+his proximity. He thought it would be a good idea to allow Eleanor to
+remain where she was and said so.
+
+"Not that I won't miss the jolly times we had together, Babe," he
+said. "I was planning some real rackets this year,--to make up for
+what I put you through," he added in her ear, as she came and stood
+beside him for a minute.
+
+Gertrude wanted to go abroad for a year, "and lick her wounds," as she
+told herself. She would have come back for her two months with
+Eleanor, but she was glad to be relieved of that necessity. Margaret
+had the secret feeling that the ordeal of the Hutchinsons was one that
+she would like to spare her foster child, and incidentally herself in
+relation to the adjustment of conditions necessary to Eleanor's visit.
+Peter wanted her with him, but he believed the new arrangement would
+be better for the child. Beulah alone held out for her rights and her
+parental privileges. The decision was finally left to Eleanor.
+
+She stood in the center of the group a little forlornly while they
+awaited her word. A wave of her old shyness overtook her and she
+blushed hot and crimson.
+
+"It's all in your own hands, dear," Beulah said briskly.
+
+"Poor kiddie," Gertrude thought, "it's all wrong somehow."
+
+"I don't know what you want me to say," Eleanor said piteously and
+sped to the haven of Peter's breast.
+
+"We'll manage a month together anyway," Peter whispered.
+
+"Then I guess I'll stay here," she whispered back, "because next I
+would have to go to Aunt Beulah's."
+
+Peter, turning involuntarily in Beulah's direction, saw the look of
+chagrin and disappointment on her face, and realized how much she
+minded playing a losing part in the game and yet how well she was
+doing it. "She's only a straight-laced kid after all," he thought.
+"She's put her whole heart and soul into this thing. There's a look
+about the top part of her face when it's softened that's a little like
+Ellen's." Ellen was his dead fiancee--the girl in the photograph at
+home in his desk.
+
+"I guess I'll stay here," Eleanor said aloud, "all in one place, and
+study with Mademoiselle."
+
+It was a decision that, on the whole, she never regretted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BROOK AND RIVER
+
+
+                   "Standing with reluctant feet,
+                   Where the brook and river meet."
+
+"I think it's a good plan to put a quotation like Kipling at the top
+of the page whenever I write anything in this diary," Eleanor began in
+the smart leather bound book with her initials stamped in black on the
+red cover--the new private diary that had been Peter's gift to her on
+the occasion of her fifteenth birthday some months before. "I think it
+is a very expressive thing to do. The quotation above is one that
+expresses me, and I think it is beautiful too. Miss Hadley--that's my
+English teacher--the girls call her Haddock because she does look
+rather like a fish--says that it's undoubtedly one of the most
+poignant descriptions of adolescent womanhood ever made. I made a note
+to look up adolescent, but didn't. Bertha Stephens has my dictionary,
+and won't bring it back because the leaves are all stuck together
+with fudge, and she thinks she ought to buy me a new one. It is very
+honorable of her to feel that way, but she never will. Good old
+Stevie, she's a great borrower.
+
+             "'Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
+             For borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.'
+                                         "Shakespeare.
+
+"Well, I hardly know where to begin. I thought I would make a resume
+of some of the events of the last year. I was only fourteen then, but
+still I did a great many things that might be of interest to me in my
+declining years when I look back into the annals of this book. To
+begin with I was only a freshie at Harmon. It is very different to be
+a sophomore. I can hardly believe that I was once a shivering looking
+little thing like all the freshmen that came in this year. I was very
+frightened, but did not think I showed it.
+
+               "'Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us,
+               To see ourselves as others see us.'
+
+"Robert Burns had twins and a rather bad character, but after he met
+his bonnie Jean he wrote very beautiful poetry. A poet's life is
+usually sad anyhow--full of disappointment and pain--but I digress.
+
+"I had two years with Mademoiselle at the Bollings' instead of one the
+way we planned. I haven't written in my Private Diary since the night
+of that momentous decision that I was to stay in one place instead of
+taking turns visiting my cooperative parents. I went to another school
+one year before I came to Harmon, and that brings me to the threshold
+of my fourteenth year. If I try to go back any farther, I'll never
+catch up. I spent that vacation with Aunt Margaret in a cottage on
+Long Island with her sister, and her sister's boy, who has grown up to
+be the silly kind that wants to kiss you and pull your hair, and those
+things. Aunt Margaret is so lovely I can't think of words to express
+it. 'Oh! rare pale Margaret,' as Tennyson says. She wears her hair in
+a coronet braid around the top of her head, and all her clothes are
+the color of violets or a soft dovey gray or white, though baby blue
+looks nice on her especially when she wears a fishyou.
+
+"I went down to Cape Cod for a week before I came to Harmon, and while
+I was there my grandmother died. I can't write about that in this
+diary. I loved my grandmother and my grandmother loved me. Uncle Peter
+came, and took charge of everything. He has great strength that holds
+you up in trouble.
+
+"The first day I came to Harmon I saw the girl I wanted for my best
+friend, and so we roomed together, and have done so ever since. Her
+name is Margaret Louise Hodges, but she is called Maggie Lou by every
+one. She has dark curly hair, and deep brown eyes, and a very silvery
+voice. I have found out that she lies some, but she says it is because
+she had such an unhappy childhood, and has promised to overcome it for
+my sake.
+
+"That Christmas vacation the 'We Are Sevens' went up the Hudson to the
+Bollings' again, but that was the last time they ever went there.
+Uncle David and his mother had a terrible fight over them. I was sorry
+for Madam Bolling in a way. There was a girl she wanted Uncle David to
+marry, a rich girl who looked something like Cleopatra, very dark
+complexioned with burning eyes. She had a sweet little Pekinese
+something like Zaidee.
+
+"Uncle David said that gold could never buy him, and to take her away,
+but Madam Bolling was very angry, of course. She accused him of
+wanting to marry Aunt Margaret, and called her a characterless, faded
+blonde. Then it was Uncle David's turn to get angry, and I have never
+seen any one get any angrier, and he told about the vow of celibacy,
+and how instead of having designs on him the whole crowd would back
+him up in his struggle to stay single. It was an awful row. I told
+Madam Bolling that I would help her to get Uncle David back, and I
+did, but she never forgave the other aunts and uncles. I suppose the
+feelings of a mother would prompt her to want Uncle David settled down
+with a rich and fashionable girl who would soon be the mother of a lot
+of lovely children. I can't imagine a Cleopatra looking baby, but she
+might have boys that looked like Uncle David.
+
+"Vacations are really about all there is to school. Freshman year is
+mostly grinding and stuffing. Having six parents to send you boxes of
+'grub' is better than having only two. Some of the girls are rather
+selfish about the eats, and come in and help themselves boldly when
+you are out of the room. Maggie Lou puts up signs over the candy box:
+'Closed for Repairs,' or 'No Trespassing by Order of the Board of
+Health,' but they don't pay much attention. Well, last summer vacation
+I spent with Uncle Jimmie. I wouldn't tell this, but I reformed him. I
+made him sign the pledge. I don't know what pledge it was because I
+didn't read it, but he said he was addicted to something worse than
+anything I could think of, and if somebody didn't pull him up, he
+wouldn't answer for the consequences. I asked him why he didn't choose
+Aunt Gertrude to do it, and he groaned only. So I said to write out a
+pledge, and sign it and I would be the witness. We were at a hotel
+with his brother's family. It isn't proper any more for me to go
+around with my uncles unless I have a chaperon. Mademoiselle says that
+I oughtn't even to go down-town alone with them but, of course, that
+is French etiquette, and not American. Well, there were lots of pretty
+girls at this hotel, all wearing white and pink dresses, and carrying
+big bell shaped parasols of bright colors. They looked sweet, like so
+many flowers, but Uncle Jimmie just about hated the sight of them. He
+said they were not girls at all, but just pink and white devices of
+the devil. On the whole he didn't act much like my merry uncle, but we
+had good times together playing tennis and golf, and going on parties
+with his brother's family, all mere children but the mother and
+father. Uncle Jimmie was afraid to go and get his mail all summer,
+although he had a great many letters on blue and lavender note paper
+scented with Roger et Gallet's violet, and Hudnut's carnation. We used
+to go down to the beach and make bonfires and burn them unread, and
+then toast marshmallows in their ashes. He said that they were
+communications from the spirits of the dead. I should have thought
+that they were from different girls, but he seemed to hate the sight
+of girls so much. Once I asked him if he had ever had an unhappy
+love-affair, just to see what he would say, but he replied 'no, they
+had all been happy ones,' and groaned and groaned.
+
+"Aunt Beulah has changed too. She has become a suffragette and thinks
+only of getting women their rights and their privileges.
+
+"Maggie Lou is an anti, and we have long arguments about the cause.
+She says that woman's place is in the home, but I say look at me, who
+have no home, how can I wash and bake and brew like the women of my
+grandfather's day, visiting around the way I do? And she says that it
+is the principle of the thing that is involved, and I ought to take a
+stand for or against. Everybody has so many different arguments that I
+don't know what I think yet, but some day I shall make up my mind for
+good.
+
+"Well, that about brings me up to the present. I meant to describe a
+few things in detail, but I guess I will not begin on the past in that
+way. I don't get so awfully much time to write in this diary because
+of the many interruptions of school life, and the way the monitors
+snoop in study hours. I don't know who I am going to spend my
+Christmas holidays with. I sent Uncle Peter a poem three days ago, but
+he has not answered it yet. I'm afraid he thought it was very silly. I
+don't hardly know what it means myself. It goes as follows:
+
+                              "A Song
+
+                "The moon is very pale to-night,
+                  The summer wind swings high,
+                I seek the temple of delight,
+                  And feel my love draw nigh.
+
+                "I seem to feel his fragrant breath
+                  Upon my glowing cheek.
+                Between us blows the wind of death,--
+                  I shall not hear him speak.
+
+"I don't know why I like to write love poems, but most of the women
+poets did. This one made me cry."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MERRY CHRISTMAS
+
+
+Margaret in mauve velvet and violets, and Gertrude in a frock of smart
+black and white were in the act of meeting by appointment at Sherry's
+one December afternoon, with a comfortable cup of tea in mind.
+Gertrude emerged from the recess of the revolving door and Margaret,
+sitting eagerly by the entrance, almost upset the attendant in her
+rush to her friend's side.
+
+"Oh! Gertrude," she cried, "I'm so glad to see you. My family is
+trying to cut me up in neat little quarters and send me north, south,
+east and west, for the Christmas holidays, and I want to stay home and
+have Eleanor. How did I ever come to be born into a family of giants,
+tell me that, Gertrude?"
+
+"The choice of parents is thrust upon us at an unfortunately immature
+period, I'll admit," Gertrude laughed. "My parents are dears, but
+they've never forgiven me for being an artist instead of a dubby bud.
+Shall we have tea right away or shall we sit down and discuss life?"
+
+"Both," Margaret said. "I don't know which is the hungrier--flesh or
+spirit."
+
+But as they turned toward the dining-room a familiar figure blocked
+their progress.
+
+"I thought that was Gertrude's insatiable hat," David exclaimed
+delightedly. "I've phoned for you both until your families have given
+instructions that I'm not to be indulged any more. I've got a surprise
+for you.--Taxi," he said to the man at the door.
+
+"Not till we've had our tea," Margaret wailed. "You couldn't be so
+cruel, David."
+
+"You shall have your tea, my dear, and one of the happiest surprises
+of your life into the bargain," David assured her as he led the way to
+the waiting cab.
+
+"I wouldn't leave this place unfed for anybody but you, David, not if
+it were ever so, and then some, as Jimmie says."
+
+"What's the matter with Jimmie, anyhow?" David inquired as the taxi
+turned down the Avenue and immediately entangled itself in a hopeless
+mesh of traffic.
+
+"I don't know; why?" Gertrude answered, though she had not been the
+one addressed at the moment. "What's the matter with this hat?" she
+rattled on without waiting for an answer. "I thought it was
+good-looking myself, and Madam Paran robbed me for it."
+
+"It is good-looking," David allowed. "It seems to be a kind of
+retrieving hat, that's all. Keeps you in a rather constant state of
+looking after the game."
+
+"What about my hat, David?" Margaret inquired anxiously. "Do you like
+that?"
+
+"I do," David admitted. "I'm crazy about it. It's a lovely cross
+between the style affected by the late Emperor Napoleon and my august
+grandmother, with some frills added."
+
+The chauffeur turned into a cross street and stopped abruptly before
+an imposing but apparently unguarded entrance.
+
+"Why, I thought this was a studio building," Gertrude said. "David, if
+you're springing a tea party on us, and we in the wild ungovernable
+state we are at present, I'll shoot the way my hat is pointing."
+
+"Straight through my left eye-glass," David finished. "You wait till
+you see the injustice you have done me."
+
+But Margaret, who often understood what was happening a few moments
+before the revelation of it, clutched at his elbow.
+
+"Oh! David, David," she whispered, "how wonderful!"
+
+"Wait till you see," David said, and herded them into the elevator.
+
+Their destination was the top floor but one. David hurried them around
+the bend in the sleekly carpeted corridor and touched the bell on the
+right of the first door they came to. It opened almost instantly and
+David's man, who was French, stood bowing and smiling on the
+threshold.
+
+"Mr. Styvvisont has arrive'," he said; "he waits you."
+
+"Welcome to our city," Peter cried, appearing in the doorway of the
+room Alphonse was indicating with that high gesture of delight with
+which only a Frenchman can lead the way. "Jimmie's coming up from the
+office and Beulah's due any minute. What do you think of the place,
+girls?"
+
+"Is it really yours, David?"
+
+"Surest thing you know." He grinned like a schoolboy. "It's really
+ours, that's what it is. I've broken away from the mater at last," he
+added a little sheepishly. "I'm going to work seriously. I've got an
+all-day desk job in my uncle's office and I'm going to dig in and see
+what I can make of myself. Also, this is going to be our headquarters,
+and Eleanor's permanent home if we're all agreed upon it,--but look
+around, ladies. Don't spare my blushes. If you think I can interior
+decorate, just tell me so frankly. This is the living-room."
+
+"It's like that old conundrum--black and white and red all over,"
+Gertrude said. "I never saw anything so stunning in all my life."
+
+"Gosh! I admire your nerve," Peter cried, "papering this place in
+white, and then getting in all this heavy carved black stuff, and the
+red in the tapestries and screens and pillows."
+
+"I wanted it to look studioish a little," David explained, "I wanted
+to get away from Louis Quartorze."
+
+"And drawing-rooms like mother used to make," Gertrude suggested. "I
+like your Oriental touches. Do you see, Margaret, everything is Indian
+or Chinese? The ubiquitous Japanese print is conspicuous by its
+absence."
+
+"I've got two portfolios full of 'em," David said, "and I always have
+one or two up in the bedrooms. I change 'em around, you know, the way
+the Japs do themselves, a different scene every few days and the rest
+decently out of sight till you're ready for 'em."
+
+"It's like a fairy story," Margaret said.
+
+"I thought you'd appreciate what little Arabian Nights I was able to
+introduce. I bought that screen," he indicated a sweep of Chinese line
+and color, "with my eye on you, and that Aladdin's lamp is yours, of
+course. You're to come in here and rub it whenever you like, and your
+heart's desire will instantly be vouchsafed to you."
+
+"What will Eleanor say?" Peter suggested, as David led the way through
+the corridor and up the tiny stairs which led to the more intricate
+part of the establishment. "This is her room, didn't you say, David?"
+He paused on the threshold of a bedroom done in ivory white and
+yellow, with all its hangings of a soft golden silk.
+
+"She once said that she wanted a yellow room," David said, "a
+daffy-down-dilly room, and I've tried to get her one. I know last
+year that Maggie Lou child refused to have yellow curtains in that
+flatiron shaped sitting-room of theirs, and Eleanor refused to be
+comforted."
+
+A wild whoop in the below stairs announced Jimmie; and Beulah arrived
+simultaneously with the tea tray. Jimmie was ecstatic when the actual
+function of the place was explained to him.
+
+"Headquarters is the one thing we've lacked," he said; "a place of our
+own, hully gee! It makes me feel almost human again."
+
+"You haven't been feeling altogether human lately, have you, Jimmie?"
+Margaret asked over her tea cup.
+
+"No, dear, I haven't." Jimmie flashed her a grateful smile. "I'm a bad
+egg," he explained to her darkly, "and the only thing you can do with
+me is to scramble me."
+
+"Scrambled is just about the way I should have described your behavior
+of late,--but that's Gertrude's line," David said. "Only she doesn't
+seem to be taking an active part in the conversation. Aren't you
+Jimmie's keeper any more, Gertrude?"
+
+"Not since she's come back from abroad," Jimmie muttered without
+looking at her.
+
+"Eleanor's taken the job over now," Peter said. "She's made him swear
+off red ink and red neckties."
+
+"Any color so long's it's red is the color that suits me best," Jimmie
+quoted. "Lord, isn't this room a pippin?" He swam in among the bright
+pillows of the divan and so hid his face for a moment. It had been a
+good many weeks since he had seen Gertrude.
+
+"I want to give a suffrage tea here," Beulah broke in suddenly. "It's
+so central, but I don't suppose David would hear of it."
+
+"Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us--" Peter began.
+
+"My _mother_ would hear of it," David said, "and then there wouldn't
+be any little studio any more. She doesn't believe in votes for
+women."
+
+"How any woman in this day and age--" Beulah began, and thought better
+of it, since she was discussing Mrs. Bolling.
+
+"Makes your blood boil, doesn't it--Beulahland?" Gertrude suggested
+helpfully, reaching for the tea cakes. "Never mind, I'll vote for
+women. I'll march in your old peerade."
+
+"The Lord helps those that help themselves," Peter said, "that's why
+Gertrude is a suffragist. She believes in helping herself, in every
+sense, don't you, 'Trude?"
+
+"Not quite in every sense," Gertrude said gravely. "Sometimes I feel
+like that girl that Margaret describes as caught in a horrid way
+between two generations. I'm neither old-fashioned nor modern."
+
+"I'd rather be that way than early Victorian," Margaret sighed.
+
+"Speaking of the latest generation, has anybody any objection to
+having our child here for the holidays?" David asked. "My idea is to
+have one grand Christmas dinner. I suppose we'll all have to eat one
+meal with our respective families, but can't we manage to get together
+here for dinner at night? Don't you think that we could?"
+
+"We can't, but we will," Margaret murmured. "Of course, have Eleanor
+here. I wanted her with me but the family thought otherwise. They've
+been trying to send me away for my health, David."
+
+"Well, they shan't. You'll stay in New York for your health and come
+to my party."
+
+"Margaret's health is merely a matter of Margaret's happiness anyhow.
+Her soul and her body are all one," Gertrude said.
+
+"Then cursed be he who brings anything but happiness to Margaret,"
+Peter said, to which sentiment David added a solemn "Amen."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't," Margaret said, shivering a little, "I feel as
+if some one were--were--"
+
+"Trampling the violets on your grave," Gertrude finished for her.
+
+Christmas that year fell on a Monday, and Eleanor did not leave school
+till the Friday before the great day. Owing to the exigencies of the
+holiday season none of her guardians came to see her before the dinner
+party itself. Even David was busy with his mother--installed now for a
+few weeks in the hotel suite that would be her home until the opening
+of the season at Palm Beach--and had only a few hurried words with
+her. Mademoiselle, whom he had imported for the occasion, met her at
+the station and helped her to do her modest shopping which consisted
+chiefly of gifts for her beloved aunts and uncles. She had arranged
+these things lovingly at their plates, and fled to dress when they
+began to assemble for the celebration. The girls were the first
+arrivals. Then Peter.
+
+"How's our child, David?" Gertrude asked. "I had a few minutes' talk
+with her over the telephone and she seemed to be flourishing."
+
+"She is," David answered. "She's grown several feet since we last saw
+her. They've been giving scenes from Shakespeare at school and she's
+been playing Juliet, it appears. She has had a fight with another girl
+about suffrage--I don't know which side she was on, Beulah, I am
+merely giving you the facts as they came to me--and the other girl was
+so unpleasant about it that she has been visited by just retribution
+in the form of the mumps, and had to be sent home and quarantined."
+
+"Sounds a bit priggish," Peter suggested.
+
+"Not really," David said, "she's as sound as a nut. She's only going
+through the different stages."
+
+"To pass deliberately through one's ages," Beulah quoted, "is to get
+the heart out of a liberal education."
+
+"Bravo, Beulah," Gertrude cried, "you're quite in your old form
+to-night."
+
+"Is she just the same little girl, David?" Margaret asked.
+
+"Just the same. She really seems younger than ever. I don't know why
+she doesn't come down. There she is, I guess. No, it's only Alphonse
+letting in Jimmie."
+
+Jimmie, whose spirits seemed to have revived under the holiday
+influence, was staggering under the weight of his parcels. The
+Christmas presents had already accumulated to a considerable mound on
+the couch. Margaret was brooding over them and trying not to look
+greedy. She was still very much of a child herself in relation to
+Santa Claus.
+
+"Merry Christmas!" Jimmie cried. "Where's my child?"
+
+"Coming," David said.
+
+"Look at the candy kids. My eyes--but you're a slick trio, girls. Pale
+lavender, pale blue, and pale pink, and all quite sophisticatedly
+decollete. You go with the decorations, too. I don't know quite why
+you do, but you do."
+
+"Give honor where honor is due, dearie. That's owing to the cleverness
+of the decorator," David said.
+
+"No man calls me dearie and lives to tell the tale," Jimmie remarked
+almost dreamily as he squared off. "How'll you have it, Dave?"
+
+But at that instant there was an unexpected interruption. Alphonse
+threw open the big entrance door at the farther end of the long room
+with a flourish.
+
+"Mademoiselle Juliet Capulet," he proclaimed with the grand air, and
+then retired behind his hand, smiling broadly.
+
+Framed in the high doorway, complete, cap and curls, softly rounding
+bodice, and the long, straight lines of the Renaissance, stood
+Juliet--Juliet, immemorial, immortal, young--austerely innocent and
+delicately shy, already beautiful, and yet potential of all the beauty
+and the wisdom of the world.
+
+"I've never worn these clothes before anybody but the girls before,"
+Eleanor said, "but I thought"--she looked about her appealingly--"you
+might like it--for a surprise."
+
+"Great jumping Jehoshaphat," Jimmie exclaimed, "I thought you said she
+was the same little girl, David."
+
+"She was half an hour ago," David answered, "I never saw such a
+metamorphosis. In fact, I don't think I ever saw Juliet before."
+
+"She is the thing itself," Gertrude answered, the artist in her
+sobered by the vision.
+
+But Peter passed a dazed hand over his eyes and stared at the delicate
+figure advancing to him.
+
+"My God! she's a woman," he said, and drew the hard breath of a man
+just awakened from sleep.
+
+[Illustration: "I thought"--she looked about her appealingly--"you might
+like it--for a surprise"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+GROWING UP
+
+
+"Dear Uncle Jimmie:
+
+"It was a pleasant surprise to get letters from every one of my uncles
+the first week I got back to school. It was unprecedented. You wrote
+me two letters last year, Uncle David six, and Uncle Peter sixteen. He
+is the best correspondent, but perhaps that is because I ask him the
+most advice. The Christmas party was lovely. I shall never forget the
+expressions on all the different faces when I came down in my Juliet
+suit. I thought at first that no one liked me in it, but I guess they
+did.
+
+"You know how well I liked my presents because you heard my wild
+exclamations of delight. I never had such a nice Christmas. It was
+sweet of the We Are Sevens to get me that ivory set, and to know that
+every different piece was the loving thought of a different aunt or
+uncle. I love the yellow monogram. It looks entirely unique, and I
+like to have things that are not like anybody else's in the world,
+don't you, Uncle Jimmie? I am glad you liked your cuff links. They are
+'neat,' but not 'gaudy.' You play golf so well I thought a golf stick
+was a nice emblem for you, and would remind you of me and last
+summer.
+
+"I am glad you think it is easier to keep your pledge now. I made a
+New Year's resolution to go without chocolates, and give the money
+they would cost to some good cause, but it's hard to pick out a cause,
+or to decide exactly how much money you are saving. I can eat the
+chocolates that are sent to me, however!!!!
+
+"Uncle David said that he thought you were not like yourself lately,
+but you seemed just the same to me Christmas, only more affectionate.
+I love you very much. I was really only joking about the chocolates.
+Eleanor."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Uncle David:
+
+"I was glad to get your nice letter. You did not have to write in
+response to my bread and butter letter, but I am glad you did. When I
+am at school, and getting letters all the time I feel as if I were
+living two beautiful lives all at once, the life of a 'cooperative
+child' and the life of Eleanor Hamlin, schoolgirl, both together.
+Letters make the people you love seem very near to you, don't you
+think they do? I sleep with all my letters under my pillow whenever I
+feel the least little bit homesick, and they almost seem to breathe
+sometimes.
+
+"School is the same old school. Maggie Lou had a wrist watch, too, for
+Christmas, but not so pretty as the one you gave me. Miss Hadley says
+I do remarkable work in English whenever I feel like it. I don't know
+whether that's a compliment or not. I took Kris Kringle for the
+subject of a theme the other day, and represented him as caught in an
+iceberg in the grim north, and not being able to reach all the poor
+little children in the tenements and hovels. The Haddock said it
+showed imagination.
+
+"There was a lecture at school on Emerson the other day. The speaker
+was a noted literary lecturer from New York. He had wonderful waving
+hair, more like Pader--I can't spell him, but you know who I
+mean--than Uncle Jimmie's, but a little like both. He introduced some
+very noble thoughts in his discourse, putting perfectly old ideas in
+a new way that made you think a lot more of them. I think a tall man
+like that with waving hair can do a great deal of good as a lecturer,
+because you listen a good deal more respectfully than if they were
+plain looking. His voice sounded a good deal like what I imagine
+Romeo's voice did. I had a nice letter from Madam Bolling. I love you,
+and I have come to the bottom of the sheet. Eleanor."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Uncle Peter:
+
+"I have just written to my other uncles, so I won't write you a long
+letter this time. They deserve letters because of being so unusually
+prompt after the holidays. You always deserve letters, but not
+specially now, any more than any other time.
+
+"Uncle Peter, I wrote to my grandfather. It seems funny to think of
+Albertina's aunt taking care of him now that Grandma is gone. I
+suppose Albertina is there a lot. She sent me a post card for
+Christmas. I didn't send her any.
+
+"Uncle Peter, I miss my grandmother out of the world. I remember how I
+used to take care of her, and put a soapstone in the small of her
+back when she was cold. I wish sometimes that I could hold your hand,
+Uncle Peter, when I get thinking about it.
+
+"Well, school is the same old school. Bertha Stephens has a felon on
+her finger, and that lets her out of hard work for a while. I will
+enclose a poem suggested by a lecture I heard recently on Emerson. It
+isn't very good, but it will help to fill up the envelope. I love you,
+and love you. Eleanor.
+
+                               "Life
+
+                 "Life is a great, a noble task,
+                   When we fulfill our duty.
+                 To work, that should be all we ask,
+                   And seek the living beauty.
+                 We know not whence we come, or where
+                   Our dim pathway is leading,
+                 Whether we tread on lilies fair,
+                   Or trample love-lies-bleeding.
+                 But we must onward go and up,
+                   Nor stop to question whither.
+                 E'en if we drink the bitter cup,
+                   And fall at last, to wither.
+
+"P. S. I haven't got the last verse very good yet, but I think the
+second one is pretty. You know 'love-lies-bleeding' is a flower, but
+it sounds allegorical the way I have put it in. Don't you think so?
+You know what all the crosses stand for."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eleanor's fifteenth year was on the whole the least eventful year of
+her life, though not by any means the least happy. She throve
+exceedingly, and gained the freedom and poise of movement and
+spontaneity that result from properly balanced periods of work and
+play and healthful exercise. From being rather small of her age she
+developed into a tall slender creature, inherently graceful and erect,
+with a small, delicate head set flower-wise on a slim white neck.
+Gertrude never tired of modeling that lovely contour, but Eleanor
+herself was quite unconscious of her natural advantages. She preferred
+the snappy-eyed, stocky, ringleted type of beauty, and spent many
+unhappy quarters of an hour wishing she were pretty according to the
+inexorable ideals of Harmon.
+
+She spent her vacation at David's apartment in charge of Mademoiselle,
+though the latter part of the summer she went to Colhassett, quite by
+herself according to her own desire, and spent a month with her
+grandfather, now in charge of Albertina's aunt. She found Albertina
+grown into a huge girl, sunk in depths of sloth and snobbishness, who
+plied her with endless questions concerning life in the gilded circles
+of New York society. Eleanor found her disgusting and yet possessed of
+that vague fascination that the assumption of prerogative often
+carries with it.
+
+She found her grandfather very old and shrunken, yet perfectly taken
+care of and with every material want supplied. She realized as she had
+never done before how the faithful six had assumed the responsibility
+of this household from the beginning, and how the old people had been
+warmed and comforted by their bounty. She laughed to remember her
+simplicity in believing that an actual salary was a perquisite of her
+adoption, and understood for the first time how small a part of the
+expense of their living this faithful stipend had defrayed. She looked
+back incredulously on that period when she had lived with them in a
+state of semi-starvation on the corn meal and cereals and very little
+else that her dollar and a half a week had purchased, and the "garden
+sass," that her grandfather had faithfully hoed and tended in the
+straggling patch of plowed field that he would hoe and tend no more.
+She spent a month practically at his feet, listening to his stories,
+helping him to find his pipe and tobacco and glasses, and reading the
+newspaper to him, and felt amply rewarded by his final acknowledgment
+that she was a good girl and he would as soon have her come again
+whenever she felt like it.
+
+On her way back to school she spent a week with her friend, Margaret
+Louise, in the Connecticut town where she lived with her comfortable,
+commonplace family. It was while she was on this visit that the most
+significant event of the entire year took place, though it was a
+happening that she put out of her mind as soon as possible and never
+thought of it again when she could possibly avoid it.
+
+Maggie Lou had a brother of seventeen, and one night in the corner of
+a moonlit porch, when they happened to be alone for a half hour, he
+had asked Eleanor to kiss him.
+
+"I don't want to kiss you," Eleanor said. Then, not wishing to convey
+a sense of any personal dislike to the brother of a friend to whom
+she was so sincerely devoted, she added, "I don't know you well
+enough."
+
+He was a big boy, with mocking blue eyes and rough tweed clothes that
+hung on him loosely.
+
+"When you know me better, will you let me kiss you?" he demanded.
+
+"I don't know," Eleanor said, still endeavoring to preserve the
+amenities.
+
+He took her hand and played with it softly.
+
+"You're an awful sweet little girl," he said.
+
+"I guess I'll go in now."
+
+"Sit still. Sister'll be back in a minute." He pulled her back to the
+chair from which she had half arisen. "Don't you believe in kissing?"
+
+"I don't believe in kissing _you_," she tried to say, but the words
+would not come. She could only pray for deliverance through the
+arrival of some member of the family. The boy's face was close to
+hers. It looked sweet in the moonlight she thought. She wished he
+would talk of something else besides kissing.
+
+"Don't you like me?" he persisted.
+
+"Yes, I do." She was very uncomfortable.
+
+"Well, then, there's no more to be said." His lips sought hers and
+pressed them. His breath came heavily, with little irregular catches
+in it.
+
+She pushed him away and turned into the house.
+
+"Don't be angry, Eleanor," he pleaded, trying to snatch at her hand.
+
+"I'm not angry," she said, her voice breaking, "I just wish you
+hadn't, that's all."
+
+There was no reference to this incident in the private diary, but,
+with an instinct which would have formed an indissoluble bond between
+herself and her Uncle Jimmie, she avoided dimly lit porches and boys
+with mischievous eyes and broad tweed covered shoulders.
+
+For her guardians too, this year was comparatively smooth running and
+colorless. Beulah's militant spirit sought the assuagement of a fierce
+expenditure of energy on the work that came to her hand through her
+new interest in suffrage. Gertrude flung herself into her sculpturing.
+She had been hurt as only the young can be hurt when their first
+delicate desires come to naught. She was very warm-blooded and eager
+under her cool veneer, and she had spent four years of hard work and
+hungry yearning for the fulness of a life she was too constrained to
+get any emotional hold on. Her fancy for Jimmie she believed was
+quite over and done with.
+
+Margaret, warmed by secret fires and nourished by the stuff that
+dreams are made of, flourished strangely in her attic chamber, and
+learned the wisdom of life by some curious method of her own of
+apprehending its dangers and delights. The only experiences she had
+that year were two proposals of marriage, one from a timid professor
+of the romance languages and the other from a young society man,
+already losing his waist line, whose sensuous spirit had been stirred
+by the ethereal grace of hers; but these things interested her very
+little. She was the princess, spinning fine dreams and waiting for the
+dawning of the golden day when the prince should come for her. Neither
+she nor Gertrude ever gave a serious thought to the five-year-old vow
+of celibacy, which was to Beulah as real and as binding as it had
+seemed on the first day she took it.
+
+Peter and David and Jimmie went their own way after the fashion of
+men, all of them identified with the quickening romance of New York
+business life. David in Wall Street was proving to be something of a
+financier to his mother's surprise and amazement; and the pressure
+relaxed, he showed some slight initiative in social matters. In fact,
+two mothers, who were on Mrs. Bolling's list as suitable
+parents-in-law, took heart of grace and began angling for him
+adroitly, while their daughters served him tea and made unabashed,
+modern-debutante eyes at him.
+
+Jimmie, successfully working his way up to the top of his firm,
+suffered intermittently from his enthusiastic abuse of the privileges
+of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. His mind and soul were in
+reality hot on the trail of a wife, and there was no woman among those
+with whom he habitually foregathered whom his spirit recognized as his
+own woman. He was further rendered helpless and miserable by the fact
+that he had not the slightest idea of his trouble. He regarded himself
+as a congenital Don Juan, from whom his better self shrank at times
+with a revulsion of loathing.
+
+Peter felt that he had his feet very firmly on a rather uninspired
+earth. He was getting on in the woolen business, which happened to be
+the vocation his father had handed down to him. He belonged to an
+amusing club, and he still felt himself irrevocably widowed by the
+early death of the girl in the photograph he so faithfully cherished.
+Eleanor was a very vital interest in his life. It had seemed to him
+for a few minutes at the Christmas party that she was no longer the
+little girl he had known, that a lovelier, more illusive creature--a
+woman--had come to displace her, but when she had flung her arms
+around him he had realized that it was still the heart of a child
+beating so fondly against his own.
+
+The real trouble with arrogating to ourselves the privileges of
+parenthood is that our native instincts are likely to become deflected
+by the substitution of the artificial for the natural responsibility.
+Both Peter and David had the unconscious feeling that their obligation
+to their race was met by their communal interest in Eleanor. Beulah,
+of course, sincerely believed that the filling in of an intellectual
+concept of life was all that was required of her. Only Jimmie groped
+blindly and bewilderedly for his own. Gertrude and Margaret both
+understood that they were unnaturally alone in a world where lovers
+met and mated, but they, too, hugged to their souls the flattering
+unction that they were parents of a sort.
+
+Thus three sets of perfectly suitable and devoted young men and
+women, of marriageable age, with dozens of interests and sympathies in
+common, and one extraordinarily vital bond, continued to walk side by
+side in a state of inhuman preoccupation, their gaze fixed inward
+instead of upon one another; and no Divine Power, happening upon the
+curious circumstance, believed the matter one for His intervention nor
+stooped to take the respective puppets by the back of their
+unconscious necks, and so knock their sluggish heads together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MARGARET LOUISA'S BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+"I am sixteen years and eight months old to-day," Eleanor wrote, "and
+I have had the kind of experience that makes me feel as if I never
+wanted to be any older. I know life is full of disillusionment and
+pain, but I did not know that any one with whom you have broken bread,
+and slept in the same room with, and told everything to for four long
+years, could turn out to be an absolute traitor and villainess. Let me
+begin at the beginning. For nearly a year now I have noticed that
+Bertha Stephens avoided me, and presented the appearance of disliking
+me. I don't like to have any one dislike me, and I have tried to do
+little things for her that would win back her affection, but with no
+success. As I was editing the Lantern I could print her essayettes (as
+she called them) and do her lots of little favors in a literary way,
+which she seemed to appreciate, but personally she avoided me like the
+plague.
+
+"Of course Stevie has lots of faults, and since Margaret Louise and I
+always talked everything over we used to talk about Stevie in the same
+way. I remember that she used to try to draw me out about Stevie's
+character. I've always thought Stevie was a kind of piker, that is
+that she would say she was going to do a thing, and then from sheer
+laziness not do it. My dictionary was a case in point. She gummed it
+all up with her nasty fudge and then wouldn't give it back to me or
+get me another, but the reason she wouldn't give it back to me was
+because her feelings were too fine to return a damaged article, and
+not fine enough to make her hump herself and get me another. That's
+only one kind of a piker and not the worst kind, but it was
+_pikerish_.
+
+"All this I told quite frankly to Maggie--I mean Margaret Louise,
+because I had no secrets from her and never thought there was any
+reason why I shouldn't. Stevie has a horrid brother, also, who has
+been up here to dances. All the girls hate him because he is so
+spoony. He isn't as spoony as Margaret Louise's brother, but he's
+quite a sloppy little spooner at that. Well, I told Margaret Louise
+that I didn't like Stevie's brother, and then I made the damaging
+remark that one reason I didn't like him was because he looked so much
+like Stevie. I didn't bother to explain to Maggie--I will not call her
+Maggie Lou any more, because that is a dear little name and sounds so
+affectionate,--Margaret Louise--what I meant by this, because I
+thought it was perfectly evident. Stevie is a peachy looking girl, a
+snow white blonde with pinky cheeks and dimples. Well, her brother is
+a snow white blond too, and he has pinky cheeks and dimples and his
+name is Carlo! We, of course, at once named him Curlo. It is not a
+good idea for a man to look too much like his sister, or to have too
+many dimples in his chin and cheeks. I had only to think of him in the
+same room with my three uncles to get his number exactly. I don't mean
+to use slang in my diary, but I can't seem to help it. Professor
+Mathews says that slang has a distinct function in the language--in
+replenishing it, but Uncle Peter says about slang words, that 'many
+are called, and few are chosen,' and there is no need to try to
+accommodate them all in one's vocabulary.
+
+"Well, I told Margaret Louise all these things about Curlo, and how
+he tried to hold my hand coming from the station one day, when the
+girls all went up to meet the boys that came up for the dance,--and I
+told her everything else in the world that happened to come into my
+head.
+
+"Then one day I got thinking about leaving Harmon--this is our senior
+year, of course--and I thought that I should leave all the girls with
+things just about right between us, excepting good old Stevie, who had
+this queer sort of grouch against me. So I decided that I'd just go
+around and have it out with her, and I did. I went into her room one
+day when her roommate was out, and demanded a show down. Well, I found
+out that Maggie--Margaret Louise had just repeated to Stevie every
+living thing that I ever said about her, just as I said it, only
+without the explanations and foot-notes that make any kind of
+conversation more understandable.
+
+"Stevie told me all these things one after another, without stopping,
+and when she was through I wished that the floor would open and
+swallow me up, but nothing so comfortable happened. I was obliged to
+gaze into Stevie's overflowing eyes and own up to the truth as well as
+I could, and explain it. It was the most humiliating hour that I ever
+spent, but I told Stevie exactly what I felt about her 'nothing
+extenuate, and naught set down in malice,' and what I had said about
+her to our mutual friend, who by the way, is not the mutual friend of
+either of us any longer. We were both crying by the time I had
+finished, but we understood each other. There were one or two things
+that she said she didn't think she would ever forget that I had said
+about her, but even those she could forgive. She said that my dislike
+of her had rankled in her heart so long that it took away all the
+bitterness to know that I wasn't really her enemy. She said that my
+coming to her that way, and not lying had showed that I had lots of
+character, and she thought in time that we could be quite intimate
+friends if I wanted to as much as she did.
+
+"After my talk with Stevie I still hoped against hope that Margaret
+Louise would turn out to have some reason or excuse for what she had
+done. I knew she had done it, but when a thing like that happens that
+upsets your whole trust in a person you simply can not believe the
+evidence of your own senses. When you read of a situation like that
+in a book you are all prepared for it by the author, who has taken the
+trouble to explain the moral weakness or unpleasantness of the
+character, and given you to understand that you are to expect a
+betrayal from him or her; but when it happens in real life out of a
+clear sky you have nothing to go upon that makes you even _believe_
+what you know.
+
+"I won't even try to describe the scene that occurred between Margaret
+Louise and me. She cried and she lied, and she accused me of trying to
+curry favor with Stevie, and Stevie of being a backbiter, and she
+argued and argued about all kinds of things but the truth, and when I
+tried to pin her down to it, she ducked and crawled and sidestepped in
+a way that was dreadful. I've seen her do something like it before
+about different things, and I ought to have known then what she was
+like inside of her soul, but I guess you have to be the object of such
+a scene before you realize the full force of it.
+
+"All I said was, 'Margaret Louise, if that's all you've got to say
+about the injury you have done me, then everything is over between us
+from this minute;' and it was, too.
+
+"I feel as if I had been writing a beautiful story or poem on what I
+thought was an enduring tablet of marble, and some one had come and
+wiped it all off as if it were mere scribblings on a slate. I don't
+know whether it would seem like telling tales to tell Uncle Peter or
+not; I don't quite know whether I want to tell him. Sometimes I wish I
+had a mother to tell such things to. It seems to me that a real mother
+would know what to say that would help you. Disillusion is a very
+strange thing--like death, only having people die seems more natural
+somehow. When they die you can remember the happy hours that you spent
+with them, but when disillusionment comes then you have lost even your
+beautiful memories.
+
+"We had for the subject of our theme this week, 'What Life Means to
+Me,' which of course was the object of many facetious remarks from the
+girls, but I've been thinking that if I sat down seriously to state in
+just so many words what life means to _me_, I hardly know what I would
+transcribe. It means disillusionment and death for one thing. Since my
+grandfather died last year I have had nobody left of my own in the
+world,--no real blood relation. Of course, I am a good deal fonder of
+my aunts and uncles than most people are of their own flesh and blood,
+but own flesh and blood is a thing that it makes you feel shivery to
+be without. If I had been Margaret Louise's own flesh and blood, she
+would never have acted like that to me. Stevie stuck up for Carlo as
+if he was really something to be proud of. Perhaps my uncles and aunts
+feel that way about me, I don't know. I don't even know if I feel that
+way about them. I certainly criticize them in my soul at times, and
+feel tired of being dragged around from pillar to post. I don't feel
+that way about Uncle Peter, but there is nobody else that I am
+certain, positive sure that I love better than life itself. If there
+is only one in the world that you feel that way about, I might not be
+Uncle Peter's one.
+
+"Oh! I wish Margaret Louise had not sold her birthright for a mess of
+pottage. I wish I had a home that I had a perfect right to go and live
+in forevermore. I wish my mother was here to comfort me to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A REAL KISS
+
+
+At seventeen, Eleanor was through at Harmon. She was to have one year
+of preparatory school and then it was the desire of Beulah's heart
+that she should go to Rogers. The others contended that the higher
+education should be optional and not obligatory. The decision was
+finally to be left to Eleanor herself, after she had considered it in
+all its bearings.
+
+"If she doesn't decide in favor of college," David said, "and she
+makes her home with me here, as I hope she will do, of course, I don't
+see what society we are going to be able to give her. Unfortunately
+none of our contemporaries have growing daughters. She ought to meet
+eligible young men and that sort of thing."
+
+"Not yet," Margaret cried. The two were having a cozy cup of tea at
+his apartment. "You're so terribly worldly, David, that you frighten
+me sometimes."
+
+"You don't know where I will end, is that the idea?"
+
+"I don't know where Eleanor will end, if you're already thinking of
+eligible young men for her."
+
+"Those things have got to be thought of," David answered gravely.
+
+"I suppose they have," Margaret sighed. "I don't want her to be
+married. I want to take her off by myself and growl over her all alone
+for a while. Then I want Prince Charming to come along and snatch her
+up quickly, and set her behind his milk white charger and ride away
+with her. If we've all got to get together and connive at marrying her
+off there won't be any comfort in having her."
+
+"I don't know," David said thoughtfully; "I think that might be fun,
+too. A vicarious love-affair that you can manipulate is one of the
+most interesting games in the world."
+
+"That's not my idea of an interesting game," Margaret said. "I like
+things very personal, David,--you ought to know that by this time."
+
+"I do know that," David said, "but it sometimes occurs to me that
+except for a few obvious facts of that nature I really know very
+little about you, Margaret."
+
+"There isn't much to know--except that I'm a woman."
+
+"That's a good deal," David answered slowly; "to a mere man that seems
+to be considerable of an adventure."
+
+"It is about as much of an adventure sometimes as it would be to be a
+field of clover in an insectless world.--This is wonderful tea, David,
+but your cream is like butter and floats around in it in wudges. No,
+don't get any more, I've got to go home. Grandmother still thinks it's
+very improper for me to call upon you, in spite of Mademoiselle and
+your ancient and honorable housekeeper."
+
+"Don't go," David said; "I apologize on my knees for the cream. I'll
+send out and have it wet down, or whatever you do to cream in that
+state. I want to talk to you. What did you mean by your last remark?"
+
+"About the cream, or the proprieties?"
+
+"About women."
+
+"Everything and nothing, David dear. I'm a little bit tired of being
+one, that's all, and I want to go home."
+
+"She wants to go home when she's being so truly delightful and
+cryptic," David said. "Have you been seeing visions, Margaret, in my
+hearth fire? Your eyes look as if you had."
+
+"I thought I did for a minute." She rose and stood absently fitting
+her gloves to her fingers. "I don't know exactly what it was I saw,
+but it was something that made me uncomfortable. It gives me the
+creeps to talk about being a woman. David, do you know sometimes I
+have a kind of queer hunch about Eleanor? I love her, you know,
+dearly, dearly. I think that she is a very successful kind of
+Frankenstein; but there are moments when I have the feeling that she's
+going to be a storm center and bring some queer trouble upon us. I
+wouldn't say this to anybody but you, David."
+
+As David tucked her in the car--he had arrived at the dignity of
+owning one now--and watched her sweet silhouette disappear, he, too,
+had his moment of clairvoyance. He felt that he was letting something
+very precious slip out of sight, as if some radiant and delicate gift
+had been laid lightly within his grasp and as lightly withdrawn again.
+As if when the door closed on his friend Margaret some stranger, more
+silent creature who was dear to him had gone with her. As soon as he
+was dressed for dinner he called Margaret on the telephone to know if
+she had arrived home safely, and was informed not only that she had,
+but that she was very wroth at him for getting her down three flights
+of stairs in the midst of her own dinner toilet.
+
+"I had a kind of hunch, too," he told her, "and I felt as if I wanted
+to hear your voice speaking."
+
+But she only scoffed at him.
+
+"If that's the way you feel about your chauffeur," she said, "you
+ought to discharge him, but he brought me home beautifully."
+
+The difference between a man's moments of prescience and a woman's, is
+that the man puts them out of his consciousness as quickly as he can,
+while a woman clings to them fearfully and goes her way a little more
+carefully for the momentary flash of foresight. David tried to see
+Margaret once or twice during that week but failed to find her in when
+he called or telephoned, and the special impulse to seek her alone
+again died naturally.
+
+One Saturday a few weeks later Eleanor telegraphed him that she
+wished to come to New York for the week-end to do some shopping.
+
+He went to the train to meet her, and when the slender chic figure in
+the most correct of tailor made suits appeared at the gateway, with an
+obsequious porter bearing her smart bag and ulster, he gave a sudden
+gasp of surprise at the picture. He had been aware for some time of
+the increase in her inches and the charm of the pure cameo-cut
+profile, but he regarded her still as a child histrionically assuming
+the airs and graces of womanhood, as small girl children masquerade in
+the trailing skirts of their elders. He was accustomed to the idea
+that she was growing up rapidly, but the fact that she was already
+grown had never actually dawned on him until this moment.
+
+"You look as if you were surprised to see me, Uncle David,--are you?"
+she said, slipping a slim hand, warm through its immaculate glove,
+into his. "You knew I was coming, and you came to meet me, and yet you
+looked as surprised as if you hadn't expected me at all."
+
+"Surprised to see you just about expresses it, Eleanor. I am surprised
+to see you. I was looking for a little girl in hair ribbons with her
+skirts to her knees."
+
+"And a blue tam-o'-shanter?"
+
+"And a blue tam-o'-shanter. I had forgotten you had grown up any to
+speak of."
+
+"You see me every vacation," Eleanor grumbled, as she stepped into the
+waiting motor. "It isn't because you lack opportunity that you don't
+notice what I look like. It's just because you're naturally
+unobserving."
+
+"Peter and Jimmie have been making a good deal of fuss about your
+being a young lady, now I think of it. Peter especially has been
+rather a nuisance about it, breaking into my most precious moments of
+triviality with the sweetly solemn thought that our little girl has
+grown to be a woman now."
+
+"Oh, does _he_ think I'm grown up, does he really?"
+
+"Jimmie is almost as bad. He's all the time wanting me to get you to
+New York over the weekend, so that he can see if you are any taller
+than you were the last time he saw you."
+
+"Are they coming to see me this evening?"
+
+"Jimmie is going to look in. Peter is tied up with his sister. You
+know she's on here from China with her daughter. Peter wants you to
+meet the child."
+
+"She must be as grown up as I am," Eleanor said. "I used to have her
+room, you know, when I stayed with Uncle Peter. Does Uncle Peter like
+her?"
+
+"Not as much as he likes you, Miss Green-eyes. He says she looks like
+a heathen Chinee but otherwise is passable. I didn't know that you
+added jealousy to the list of your estimable vices."
+
+"I'm not jealous," Eleanor protested; "or if I am it's only because
+she's blood relation,--and I'm not, you know."
+
+"It's a good deal more prosaic to be a blood relation, if anybody
+should ask you," David smiled. "A blood relation is a good deal like
+the famous primrose on the river's brim."
+
+"'A primrose by the river's brim a yellow primrose was to him,--and
+nothing more,'" Eleanor quoted gaily. "Why, what more--" she broke off
+suddenly and colored slightly.
+
+"What more would anybody want to be than a yellow primrose by the
+river's brim?" David finished for her. "I don't know, I'm sure. I'm a
+mere man and such questions are too abstruse for me, as I told your
+Aunt Margaret the other day. Now I think of it, though, you don't look
+unlike a yellow primrose yourself to-day, daughter."
+
+"That's because I've got a yellow ribbon on my hat."
+
+"No, the resemblance goes much deeper. It has something to do with
+youth and fragrance and the flowers that bloom in the spring."
+
+"The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la," Eleanor returned
+saucily, "have nothing to do with the case."
+
+"She's learning that she has eyes, good Lord," David said to himself,
+but aloud he remarked paternally, "I saw all your aunts yesterday.
+Gertrude gave a tea party and invited a great many famous tea party
+types, and ourselves."
+
+"Was Aunt Beulah there?"
+
+"I said all your aunts. Beulah was there, like the famous Queenie,
+with her hair in a braid."
+
+"Not really."
+
+"Pretty nearly. She's gone in for dress reform now, you know, a kind
+of middy blouse made out of a striped portiere with a kilted skirt of
+the same material and a Scotch cap. She doesn't look so bad in it.
+Your Aunt Beulah presents a peculiar phenomenon these days. She's
+growing better-looking and behaving worse every day of her life."
+
+"Behaving worse?"
+
+"She's theory ridden and fad bitten. She'll come to a bad end if
+something doesn't stop her."
+
+"Do you mean--stop her working for suffrage? I'm a suffragist, Uncle
+David."
+
+"And quite right to remind me of it before I began slamming the cause.
+No, I don't mean suffrage. I believe in suffrage myself. I mean the
+way she's going after it. There are healthy ways of insisting on your
+rights and unhealthy ways. Beulah's getting further and further off
+key, that's all. Here we are at home, daughter. Your poor old
+cooperative father welcomes you to the associated hearthstone."
+
+"This front entrance looks more like my front entrance than any other
+place does," Eleanor said. "Oh! I'm so glad to be here. George, how is
+the baby?" she asked the black elevator man, who beamed delightedly
+upon her.
+
+"Gosh! I didn't know he had one," David chuckled. "It takes a
+woman--"
+
+Jimmie appeared in the evening, laden with violets and a five pound
+box of the chocolates most in favor in the politest circles at the
+moment. David whistled when he saw them.
+
+"What's devouring you, papa?" Jimmie asked him. "Don't I always place
+tributes at the feet of the offspring?"
+
+"Mirror candy and street corner violets, yes," David said. "It's only
+the labels that surprised me."
+
+"She knows the difference, now," Jimmie answered, "what would you?"
+
+The night before her return to school it was decreed that she should
+go to bed early. She had spent two busy days of shopping and "seeing
+the family." She had her hours discussing her future with Peter, long
+visits and talks with Margaret and Gertrude, and a cup of tea at
+suffrage headquarters with Beulah, as well as long sessions in the
+shops accompanied by Mademoiselle, who made her home now permanently
+with David. She sat before the fire drowsily constructing pyramids out
+of the embers and David stood with one arm on the mantel, smoking his
+after-dinner cigar, and watching her.
+
+"Is it to be college, Eleanor?" he asked her presently.
+
+"I can't seem to make up my mind, Uncle David."
+
+"Don't you like the idea?"
+
+"Yes, I'd love it,--if--"
+
+"If what, daughter?"
+
+"If I thought I could spare the time."
+
+"The time? Elucidate."
+
+"I'm going to earn my own living, you know."
+
+"I didn't know."
+
+"I am. I've got to--in order to--to feel right about things."
+
+"Don't you like the style of living to which your cooperative parents
+have accustomed you?"
+
+"I love everything you've ever done for me, but I can't go on letting
+you do things for me forever."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know why not exactly. It doesn't seem--right, that's all."
+
+"It's your New England conscience, Eleanor; one of the most specious
+varieties of consciences in the world. It will always be tempting you
+to do good that better may come. Don't listen to it, daughter."
+
+"I'm in earnest, Uncle David. I don't know whether I would be better
+fitted to earn my living if I went to business college or real
+college. What do you think?"
+
+"I can't think,--I'm stupefied."
+
+"Uncle Peter couldn't think, either."
+
+"Have you mentioned this brilliant idea to Peter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He talked it over with me, but I think he thinks I'll change my
+mind."
+
+"I think you'll change your mind. Good heavens! Eleanor, we're all
+able to afford you--the little we spend on you is nothing divided
+among six of us. It's our pleasure and privilege. When did you come to
+this extraordinary decision?"
+
+"A long time ago. The day that Mrs. Bolling talked to me, I think.
+There are things she said that I've never forgotten. I told Uncle
+Peter to think about it and then help me to decide which to do, and I
+want you to think, Uncle David, and tell me truly what you believe
+the best preparation for a business life would be. I thought perhaps I
+might be a stenographer in an editorial office, and my training there
+would be more use to me than four years at college, but I don't
+know."
+
+"You're an extraordinary young woman," David said, staring at her.
+"I'm glad you broached this subject, if only that I might realize how
+extraordinary, but I don't think anything will come of it, my dear. I
+don't want you to go to college unless you really want to, but if you
+do want to, I hope you will take up the pursuit of learning as a
+pursuit and not as a means to an end. Do you hear me, daughter?"
+
+"Yes, Uncle David."
+
+"Then let's have no more of this nonsense of earning your own
+living."
+
+"Are you really displeased, Uncle David?"
+
+"I should be if I thought you were serious,--but it's bedtime. If
+you're going to get your beauty sleep, my dear, you ought to begin on
+it immediately."
+
+Eleanor rose obediently, her brow clouded a little, and her head held
+high. David watched the color coming and going in the sweet face and
+the tender breast rising and falling with her quickening breath.
+
+"I thought perhaps you would understand," she said. "Good night."
+
+She had always kissed him "good night" until this visit, and he had
+refrained from commenting on the omission before, but now he put out
+his hand to her.
+
+"Haven't you forgotten something?" he asked. "There is only one way
+for a daughter to say good night to her parent."
+
+She put up her face, and as she did so he caught the glint of tears in
+her eyes.
+
+"Why, Eleanor, dear," he said, "did you care?" And he kissed her. Then
+his lips sought hers again.
+
+With his arms still about her shoulder he stood looking down at her. A
+hot tide of crimson made its way slowly to her brow and then receded,
+accentuating the clear pallor of her face.
+
+"That was a real kiss, dear," he said slowly. "We mustn't get such
+things confused. I won't bother you with talking about it to-night, or
+until you are ready. Until then we'll pretend that it didn't happen,
+but if the thought of it should ever disturb you the least bit, dear,
+you are to remember that the time is coming when I shall have
+something to say about it; will you remember?"
+
+"Yes, Uncle David," Eleanor said uncertainly, "but I--I--"
+
+David took her unceremoniously by the shoulders.
+
+"Go now," he said, and she obeyed him without further question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+BEULAH'S PROBLEM
+
+
+Peter was shaving for the evening. His sister was giving a dinner
+party for two of her husband's fellow bankers and their wives. After
+that they were going to see the latest Belasco production, and from
+there to some one of the new dancing "clubs,"--the smart cabarets that
+were forced to organize in the guise of private enterprises to evade
+the two o'clock closing law. Peter enjoyed dancing, but he did not as
+a usual thing enjoy bankers' wives. He was deliberating on the
+possibility of excusing himself gracefully after the theater, on the
+plea of having some work to do, and finally decided that his sister's
+feelings would be hurt if she realized he was trying to escape the
+climax of the hospitality she had provided so carefully.
+
+He gazed at himself intently over the drifts of lather and twisted his
+shaving mirror to the most propitious angle from time to time. In the
+room across the hall--Eleanor's room, he always called it to
+himself--his young niece was singing bits of the Mascagni intermezzo
+interspersed with bits of the latest musical comedy, in a rather
+uncertain contralto.
+
+"My last girl came from Vassar, and I don't know where to class her."
+
+Peter's mind took up the refrain automatically. "My last girl--" and
+began at the beginning of the chorus again. "My last girl came from
+Vassar," which brought him by natural stages to the consideration of
+the higher education and of Beulah, and a conversation concerning her
+that he had had with Jimmie and David the night before.
+
+"She's off her nut," Jimmie said succinctly. "It's not exactly that
+there's nobody home," he rapped his curly pate significantly, "but
+there's too much of a crowd there. She's not the same old girl at all.
+She used to be a good fellow, high-brow propaganda and all. Now she's
+got nothing else in her head. What's happened to her?"
+
+"It's what hasn't happened to her that's addled her," David explained.
+"It's these highly charged, hypersensitive young women that go to
+pieces under the modern pressure. They're the ones that need licking
+into shape by all the natural processes."
+
+"By which you mean a drunken husband and a howling family?" Jimmie
+suggested.
+
+"Yes, or its polite equivalent."
+
+"That is true, isn't it?" Peter said. "Feminism isn't the answer to
+Beulah's problem."
+
+"It is the problem," David said; "she's poisoning herself with it. I
+know what I'm talking about. I've seen it happen. My cousin Jack
+married a girl with a sister a great deal like Beulah, looks,
+temperament, and everything else, though she wasn't half so nice. She
+got going the militant pace and couldn't stop herself. I never met her
+at a dinner party that she wasn't tackling somebody on the subject of
+man's inhumanity to woman. She ended in a sanitorium; in fact, they're
+thinking now of taking her to the--"
+
+"--bug house," Jimmie finished cheerfully.
+
+"And in the beginning she was a perfectly good girl that needed
+nothing in the world but a chance to develop along legitimate lines."
+
+"The frustrate matron, eh?" Peter said.
+
+"The frustrate matron," David agreed gravely. "I wonder you haven't
+realized this yourself, Gram. You're keener about such things than I
+am. Beulah is more your job than mine."
+
+"Is she?"
+
+"You're the only one she listens to or looks up to. Go up and tackle
+her some day and see what you can do. She's sinking fast."
+
+"Give her the once over and throw out the lifeline," Jimmie said.
+
+"I thought all this stuff was a phase, a part of her taking herself
+seriously as she always has. I had no idea it was anything to worry
+about," Peter persisted. "Are you sure she's in bad shape--that she's
+got anything more than a bad attack of Feminism of the Species in its
+most virulent form? They come out of _that_, you know."
+
+"She's batty," Jimmie nodded gravely. "Dave's got the right dope."
+
+"Go up and look her over," David persisted; "you'll see what we mean,
+then. Beulah's in a bad way."
+
+Peter reviewed this conversation while he shaved the right side of his
+face, and frowned prodigiously through the lather. He wished that he
+had an engagement that evening that he could break in order to get to
+see Beulah at once, and discover for himself the harm that had come to
+his friend. He was devoted to Beulah. He had always felt that he saw
+a little more clearly than the others the virtue that was in the girl.
+He admired the pluck with which she made her attack on life and the
+energy with which she accomplished her ends. There was to him
+something alluring and quaint about her earnestness. The fact that her
+soundness could be questioned came to him with something like a shock.
+As soon as he was dressed he was called to the telephone to talk to
+David.
+
+"Margaret has just told me that Doctor Penrose has been up to see
+Beulah and pronounces it a case of nervous breakdown. He wants her to
+try out psycho-analysis, and that sort of thing. He seems to feel that
+it's serious. Margaret is fearfully upset, poor girl. So'm I, to tell
+the truth."
+
+"And so am I," Peter acknowledged to himself as he hung up the
+receiver. He was so absorbed during the evening that one of the
+ladies--the wife of the fat banker--found him extremely dull and
+decided against asking him to dinner with his sister. The wife of the
+thin banker, who was in his charge at the theater, got the benefit of
+his effort to rouse himself and grace the occasion creditably, and
+found him delightful. By the time the evening was over he had decided
+that Beulah should be pulled out of whatever dim world of dismay and
+delusion she might be wandering in, at whatever cost. It was
+unthinkable that she should be wasted, or that her youth and splendid
+vitality should go for naught.
+
+He found her eager to talk to him the next night when he went to see
+her.
+
+"Peter," she said, "I want you to go to my aunt and my mother, and
+tell them that I've got to go on with my work,--that I can't be
+stopped and interrupted by this foolishness of doctors and nurses. I
+never felt better in my life, except for not being able to sleep, and
+I think that is due to the way they have worried me. I live in a world
+they don't know anything about, that's all. Even if they were right,
+if I am wearing myself out soul and body for the sake of the cause,
+what business is it of theirs to interfere? I'm working for the souls
+and bodies of women for ages to come. What difference does it make if
+my soul and body suffer? Why shouldn't they?" Her eyes narrowed. Peter
+observed the unnatural light in them, the apparent dryness of her
+lips, the two bright spots burning below her cheek-bones.
+
+"Because," he answered her slowly, "I don't think it was the original
+intention of Him who put us here that we should sacrifice everything
+we are to the business of emphasizing the superiority of a sex."
+
+"That isn't the point at all, Peter. No man understands, no man can
+understand. It's woman's equality we want emphasized, just literally
+that and nothing more. You've pauperized and degraded us long
+enough--"
+
+"Thou canst not say I--" Peter began.
+
+"Yes, you and every other man, every man in the world is a party to
+it."
+
+"I had to get her going," Peter apologized to himself, "in order to
+get a point of departure. Not if I vote for women, Beulah, dear," he
+added aloud.
+
+"If you throw your influence with us instead of against us," she
+conceded, "you're helping to right the wrong that you have permitted
+for so long."
+
+"Well, granting your premise, granting all your premises, Beulah--and
+I admit that most of them have sound reasoning behind them--your
+battle now is all over but the shouting. There's no reason that you
+personally should sacrifice your last drop of energy to a campaign
+that's practically won already."
+
+"If you think the mere franchise is all I have been working for,
+Peter,--"
+
+"I don't. I know the thousand and one activities you women are
+concerned with. I know how much better church and state always have
+been and are bound to be, when the women get behind and push, if they
+throw their strength right."
+
+Beulah rose enthusiastically to this bait and talked rationally and
+well for some time. Just as Peter was beginning to feel that David and
+Jimmie had been guilty of the most unsympathetic exaggeration of her
+state of mind--unquestionably she was not as fit physically as
+usual--she startled him with an abrupt change into almost hysterical
+incoherence.
+
+"I have a right to live my own life," she concluded, "and
+nobody--nobody shall stop me."
+
+"We are all living our own lives, aren't we?" Peter asked mildly.
+
+"No woman lives her own life to-day," Beulah cried, still excitedly.
+"Every woman is living the life of some man, who has the legal right
+to treat her as an imbecile."
+
+"Hold on, Beulah. How about the suffrage states, how about the women
+who are already in the proud possession of their rights and
+privileges? They are not technical imbeciles any longer according to
+your theory. The vote's coming. Every woman will be a super-woman in
+two shakes,--so what's devouring you, as Jimmie says?"
+
+"It's after all the states have suffrage that the big fight will
+really begin," Beulah answered wearily. "It's the habit of wearing the
+yoke we'll have to fight then."
+
+"The anti-feminists," Peter said, "I see. Beulah, can't you give
+yourself any rest, or is the nature of the cause actually suicidal?"
+
+To his surprise her tense face quivered at this and she tried to
+steady a tremulous lower lip.
+
+"I am tired," she said, a little piteously, "dreadfully tired, but
+nobody cares."
+
+"Is that fair?"
+
+"It's true."
+
+"Your friends care."
+
+"They only want to stop me doing something they have no sympathy with.
+What do Gertrude and Margaret know of the real purpose of my life or
+my failure or success? They take a sentimental interest in my health,
+that's all. Do you suppose it made any difference to Jeanne d'Arc how
+many people took a sympathetic interest in her health if they didn't
+believe in what she believed in?"
+
+"There's something in that."
+
+"I thought Eleanor would grow up to take an interest in the position
+of women, and to care about the things I cared about, but she's not
+going to."
+
+"She's very fond of you."
+
+"Not as fond as she is of Margaret."
+
+Peter longed to dispute this, but he could not in honesty.
+
+"She's a suffragist."
+
+"She's so lukewarm she might just as well be an anti. She's naturally
+reactionary. Women like that aren't much use. They drag us back like
+so much dead weight."
+
+"I suppose Eleanor has been a disappointment to you," Peter mused,
+"but she tries pretty hard to be all things to all parents, Beulah.
+You'll find she won't fail you if you need her."
+
+"I shan't need her," Beulah said, prophetically. "I hoped she'd stand
+beside me in the work, but she's not that kind. She'll marry early and
+have a family, and that will be the end of her."
+
+"I wonder if she will," Peter said, "I hope so. She still seems such
+a child to me. I believe in marriage, Beulah, don't you?"
+
+Her answer surprised him.
+
+"Under certain conditions, I do. I made a vow once that I would never
+marry and I've always believed that it would be hampering and limiting
+to a woman, but now I see that the fight has got to go on. If there
+are going to be women to carry on the fight they will have to be born
+of the women who are fighting to-day."
+
+"Thank God," Peter said devoutly. "It doesn't make any difference why
+you believe it, if you do believe it."
+
+"It makes all the difference," Beulah said, but her voice softened.
+"What I believe is more to me than anything else in the world,
+Peter."
+
+"That's all right, too. I understand your point of view, Beulah. You
+carry it a little bit too far, that's all that's wrong with it from my
+way of thinking."
+
+"Will you help me to go on, Peter?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Talk to my aunt and my mother. Tell them that they're all wrong in
+their treatment of me."
+
+"I think I could undertake to do that"--Peter was convinced that a
+less antagonistic attitude on the part of her relatives would be more
+successful--"and I will."
+
+Beulah's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"You're the only one who comes anywhere near knowing," she said, "or
+who ever will, I guess. I try so hard, Peter, and now when I don't
+seem to be accomplishing as much as I want to, as much as it's
+necessary for me to accomplish if I am to go on respecting myself,
+every one enters into a conspiracy to stop my doing anything at all.
+The only thing that makes me nervous is the way I am thwarted and
+opposed at every turn. I haven't got nervous prostration."
+
+"Perhaps not, but you have something remarkably like _idee fixe_,"
+Peter said to himself compassionately.
+
+He found her actual condition less dangerous but much more difficult
+than he had anticipated. She was living wrong, that was the sum and
+substance of her malady. Her life was spent confronting theories and
+discounting conditions. She did not realize that it is only the
+interest of our investment in life that we can sanely contribute to
+the cause of living. Our capital strength and energy must be used for
+the struggle for existence itself if we are to have a world of
+balanced individuals. There is an arrogance involved in assuming
+ourselves more humane than human that reacts insidiously on our health
+and morals. Peter, looking into the twitching hectic face before him
+with the telltale glint of mania in the eyes, felt himself becoming
+helpless with pity for a mind gone so far askew. He felt curiously
+responsible for Beulah's condition.
+
+"She wouldn't have run herself so far aground," he thought, "if I had
+been on the job a little more. I could have helped her to steer
+straighter. A word here and a lift there and she would have come
+through all right. Now something's got to stop her or she can't be
+stopped. She'll preach once too often out of the tail of a cart on the
+subject of equal guardianship,--and--"
+
+Beulah put her hands to her face suddenly, and, sinking back into the
+depths of the big cushioned chair on the edge of which she had been
+tensely poised during most of the conversation, burst into tears.
+
+"You're the only one that knows," she sobbed over and over again.
+"I'm so tired, Peter, but I've got to go on and on and on. If they
+stop me, I'll kill myself."
+
+Peter crossed the room to her side and sat down on her chair-arm.
+
+"Don't cry, dear," he said, with a hand on her head. "You're too tired
+to think things out now,--but I'll help you."
+
+She lifted a piteous face, for the moment so startlingly like that of
+the dead girl he had loved that his senses were confused by the
+resemblance.
+
+"How, Peter?" she asked. "How can you help me?"
+
+"I think I see the way," he said slowly.
+
+He slipped to his knees and gathered her close in his arms.
+
+"I think this will be the way, dear," he said very gently.
+
+"Does this mean that you want me to marry you?" she whispered, when
+she was calmer.
+
+"If you will, dear," he said. "Will you?"
+
+"I will,--if I can, if I can make it seem right to after I've thought
+it all out.--Oh! Peter, I love you. I love you."
+
+"I had no idea of that," he said gravely, "but it's wonderful that
+you do. I'll put everything I've got into trying to make you happy,
+Beulah."
+
+"I know you will, Peter." Her arms closed around his neck and
+tightened there. "I love you."
+
+He made her comfortable and she relaxed like a tired child, almost
+asleep under his soothing hand, and the quiet spell of his
+tenderness.
+
+"I didn't know it could be like this," she whispered.
+
+"But it can," he answered her.
+
+In his heart he was saying, "This is best. I am sure this is best. It
+is the right and normal way for her--and for me."
+
+In her tri-cornered dormitory room at the new school which she was not
+sharing with any one this year Eleanor, enveloped in a big brown and
+yellow wadded bathrobe, was writing a letter to Peter. Her hair hung
+in two golden brown braids over her shoulders and her pure profile was
+bent intently over the paper. At the moment when Beulah made her
+confession of love and closed her eyes against the breast of the man
+who had just asked her to marry him, two big tears forced their way
+between Eleanor's lids and splashed down upon her letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MOSTLY UNCLE PETER
+
+
+"Dear Uncle Peter," the letter ran, "I am very, very homesick and
+lonely for you to-day. It seems to me that I would gladly give a whole
+year of my life just for the privilege of being with you, and talking
+instead of writing,--but since that can not be, I am going to try and
+write you about the thing that is troubling me. I can't bear it alone
+any longer, and still I don't know whether it is the kind of thing
+that it is honorable to tell or not. So you see I am very much
+troubled and puzzled, and this trouble involves some one else in a way
+that it is terrible to think of.
+
+"Uncle Peter, dear, I do not want to be married. Not until I have
+grown up, and seen something of the world. You know it is one of my
+dearest wishes to be self-supporting, not because I am a Feminist or a
+new woman, or have 'the unnatural belief of an antipathy to man' that
+you're always talking about, but just because it will prove to me once
+and for all that I belong to myself, and that my _soul_ isn't, and
+never has been cooperative. You know what I mean by this, and you are
+not hurt by my feeling so. You, I am sure, would not want me to be
+married, or to have to think of myself as engaged, especially not to
+anybody that we all knew and loved, and who is very close to me and
+you in quite another way. Please don't try to imagine what I mean,
+Uncle Peter--even if you know, you must tell yourself that you don't
+know. Please, please pretend even to yourself that I haven't written
+you this letter. I know people do tell things like this, but I don't
+know quite how they bring themselves to do it, even if they have
+somebody like you who understands everything--everything.
+
+"Uncle Peter, dear, I am supposed to be going to be married by and by
+when the one who wants it feels that it can be spoken of, and until
+that happens, I've got to wait for him to speak, unless I can find
+some way to tell him that I do not want it ever to be. I don't know
+how to tell him. I don't know how to make him feel that I do not
+belong to him. It is only myself I belong to, and I belong to you, but
+I don't know how to make that plain to any one who does not know it
+already. I can't say it unless perhaps you can help me to.
+
+"I am different from the other girls. I know every girl always thinks
+there is something different about her, but I think there are ways in
+which I truly am different. When I want anything I know more clearly
+what it is, and why I want it than most other girls do, and not only
+that, but I know now, that I want to keep myself, and everything I
+think and feel and am,--_sacred_. There is an inner shrine in a
+woman's soul that she must keep inviolate. I know that now.
+
+"A liberty that you haven't known how, or had the strength to prevent,
+is a terrible thing. One can't forget it. Uncle Peter, dear, twice in
+my life things have happened that drive me almost desperate when I
+think of them. If these things should happen again when I know that I
+don't want them to, I don't think there would be any way of my bearing
+it. Perhaps you can tell me something that will make me find a way out
+of this tangle. I don't see what it could be, but lots of times you
+have shown me the way out of endless mazes that were not grown up
+troubles like this, but seemed very real to me just the same.
+
+"Uncle Peter, dear, dear, dear,--you are all I have. I wish you were
+here to-night, though you wouldn't be let in, even if you beat on the
+gate ever so hard, for it's long after bedtime. I am up in my tower
+room all alone. Oh! answer this letter. Answer it quickly, quickly."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eleanor read her letter over and addressed a tear splotched envelope
+to Peter. Then she slowly tore letter and envelope into little bits.
+
+"He would know," she said to herself. "I haven't any real right to
+tell him. It would be just as bad as any kind of tattling."
+
+She began another letter to him but found she could not write without
+saying what was in her heart, and so went to bed uncomforted. There
+was nothing in her experience to help her in her relation to David.
+His kiss on her lips had taught her the nature of such kisses: had
+made her understand suddenly the ease with which the strange, sweet
+spell of sex is cast. She related it to the episode of the unwelcome
+caress bestowed upon her by the brother of Maggie Lou, and that half
+forgotten incident took on an almost terrible significance. She
+understood now how she should have repelled that unconscionable boy,
+but that understanding did not help her with the problem of her Uncle
+David. Though the thought of it thrilled through her with a strange
+incredible delight, she did not want another kiss of his upon her
+lips.
+
+"It's--it's--like that," she said to herself. "I want it to be from
+somebody--else. Somebody _realer_ to me. Somebody that would make it
+seem right." But even to herself she mentioned no names.
+
+She had definitely decided against going to college. She felt that she
+must get upon her own feet quickly and be under no obligation to any
+man. Vaguely her stern New England rearing was beginning to indicate
+the way that she should tread. No man or woman who did not understand
+"the value of a dollar," was properly equipped to do battle with the
+realities of life. The value of a dollar, and a clear title to
+it--these were the principles upon which her integrity must be founded
+if she were to survive her own self-respect. Her Puritan fathers had
+bestowed this heritage upon her. She had always felt the irregularity
+of her economic position; now that the complication of her relation
+with David had arisen, it was beginning to make her truly
+uncomfortable.
+
+David had been very considerate of her, but his consideration
+frightened her. He had been so afraid that she might be hurt or
+troubled by his attitude toward her that he had explained again, and
+almost in so many words that he was only waiting for her to grow
+accustomed to the idea before he asked her to become his wife. She had
+looked forward with considerable trepidation to the Easter vacation
+following the establishment of their one-sided understanding, but
+David relieved her apprehension by putting up at his club and leaving
+her in undisturbed possession of his quarters. There, with
+Mademoiselle still treating her as a little girl, and the other five
+of her heterogeneous foster family to pet and divert her at intervals,
+she soon began to feel her life swing back into a more accustomed and
+normal perspective. David's attitude to her was as simple as ever, and
+when she was with the devoted sextet she was almost able to forget the
+matter that was at issue between them--almost but not quite.
+
+She took quite a new kind of delight in her association with the
+group. She found herself suddenly on terms of grown up equality with
+them. Her consciousness of the fact that David was tacitly waiting
+for her to become a woman, had made a woman of her already, and she
+looked on her guardians with the eyes of a woman, even though a very
+newly fledged and timorous one.
+
+She was a trifle self-conscious with the others, but with Jimmie she
+was soon on her old familiar footing.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Uncle Jimmie is still a great deal of fun," she wrote in her diary.
+"He does just the same old things he used to do with me, and a good
+many new ones in addition. He brings me flowers, and gets me taxi-cabs
+as if I were really a grown up young lady, and he pinches my nose and
+teases me as if I were still the little girl that kept house in a
+studio for him. I never realized before what a good-looking man he is.
+I used to think that Uncle Peter was the only handsome man of the
+three, but now I realize that they are all exceptionally good-looking.
+Uncle David has a great deal of distinction, of course, but Uncle
+Jimmie is merry and radiant and vital, and tall and athletic looking
+into the bargain. The ladies on the Avenue all turn to look at him
+when we go walking. He says that the gentlemen all turn to look at
+me, and I think perhaps they do when I have my best clothes on, but in
+my school clothes I am quite certain that nothing like that happens.
+
+"I have been out with Uncle Jimmie Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday
+and Friday,--four days of my vacation. We've been to the Hippodrome
+and Chinatown, and we've dined at Sherry's, and one night we went down
+to the little Italian restaurant where I had my first introduction to
+_eau rougie_, and was so distressed about it. I shall never forget
+that night, and I don't think Uncle Jimmie will ever be done teasing
+me about it. It is nice to be with Uncle Jimmie so much, but I never
+seem to see Uncle Peter any more. Alphonse is very careful about
+taking messages, I know, but it does seem to me that Uncle Peter must
+have telephoned more times than I know of. It does seem as if he
+would, at least, try to see me long enough to have one of our old time
+talks again. To see him with all the others about is only a very
+little better than not seeing him at all. He isn't like himself,
+someway. There is a shadow over him that I do not understand."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Don't you think that Uncle Peter has changed?" she asked Jimmie,
+when the need of speaking of him became too strong to withstand.
+
+"He is a little pale about the ears," Jimmie conceded, "but I think
+that's the result of hard work and not enough exercise. He spends all
+his spare time trying to patch up Beulah instead of tramping and
+getting out on his horse the way he used to. He's doing a good job on
+the old dear, but it's some job, nevertheless and notwithstanding--"
+
+"Is Aunt Beulah feeling better than she was?" Eleanor's lips were dry,
+but she did her best to make her voice sound natural. It seemed
+strange that Jimmie could speak so casually of a condition of affairs
+that made her very heart stand still. "I didn't know that Uncle Peter
+had been taking care of her."
+
+"Taking care of her isn't a circumstance to what Peter has been doing
+for Beulah. You know she hasn't been right for some time. She got
+burning wrong, like the flame on our old gas stove in the studio when
+there was air in it."
+
+"Uncle David thought so the last time I was here," Eleanor said, "but
+I didn't know that Uncle Peter--"
+
+"Peter, curiously enough, was the last one to tumble. Dave and I got
+alarmed about the girl and held a consultation, with the result that
+Doctor Gramercy was called. If we'd believed he would go into it quite
+so heavily we might have thought again before we sicked him on. It's
+very nice for Mary Ann, but rather tough on Abraham as they said when
+the lady was deposited on that already overcrowded bosom. Now Beulah's
+got suffrage mania, and Peter's got Beulah mania, and it's a merry
+mess all around."
+
+"Is Uncle Peter with her a lot?"
+
+"Every minute. You haven't seen much of him since you came, have
+you?--Well, the reason is that every afternoon as soon as he can get
+away from the office, he puts on a broad sash marked 'Votes for
+Women,' and trundles Beulah around in her little white and green
+perambulator, trying to distract her mind from suffrage while he talks
+to her gently and persuasively upon the subject. Suffrage is the only
+subject on her mind, he explains, so all he can do is to try to cuckoo
+gently under it day by day. It's a very complicated process but he's
+making headway."
+
+"I'm glad of that," Eleanor said faintly. "How--how is Aunt Gertrude?
+I don't see her very often, either."
+
+"Gertrude's all right." It was Jimmie's turn to look self-conscious.
+"She never has time for me any more; I'm not high-brow enough for her.
+She's getting on like a streak, you know, exhibiting everywhere."
+
+"I know she is. She gave me a cast of her faun's head. I think it is
+lovely. Aunt Margaret looks well."
+
+"She is, I guess, but don't let's waste all our valuable time talking
+about the family. Let's talk about us--you and me. You ask me how I'm
+feeling and then I'll tell you. Then I'll ask you how you're feeling
+and you'll tell me. Then I'll tell you how I imagine you must be
+feeling from the way you're looking,--and that will give me a chance
+to expatiate on the delectability of your appearance. I'll work up
+delicately to the point where you will begin to compare me favorably
+with all the other nice young men you know,--and then we'll be off."
+
+"Shall we?" Eleanor asked, beginning to sparkle a little.
+
+"We shall indeed," he assured her solemnly. "You begin. No, on second
+thoughts, I'll begin. I'll begin at the place where I start telling
+you how excessively well you're looking. I don't know, considering its
+source, whether it would interest you or not, but you have the biggest
+blue eyes that I've, ever seen in all my life,--and I'm rather a judge
+of them."
+
+"All the better to eat you with, my dear," Eleanor chanted.
+
+"Quite correct." He shot her a queer glance from under his eyebrows.
+"I don't feel very safe when I look into them, my child. It would be a
+funny joke on me if they did prove fatal to me, wouldn't
+it?--well,--but away with such nonsense. I mustn't blither to the very
+babe whose cradle I am rocking, must I?"
+
+"I'm not a babe, Uncle Jimmie. I feel very old sometimes. Older than
+any of you."
+
+"Oh! you are, you are. You're a regular sphinx sometimes. Peter says
+that you even disconcert him at times, when you take to remembering
+things out of your previous experience."
+
+"'When he was a King in Babylon and I was a Christian Slave?'" she
+quoted quickly.
+
+"Exactly. Only I'd prefer to play the part of the King of Babylon, if
+it's all the same to you, niecelet. How does the rest of it go, 'yet
+not for a--' something or other 'would I wish undone that deed beyond
+the grave.' Gosh, my dear, if things were otherwise, I think I could
+understand how that feller felt. Get on your hat, and let's get out
+into the open. My soul is cramped with big potentialities this
+afternoon. I wish you hadn't grown up, Eleanor. You are taking my
+breath away in a peculiar manner. No man likes to have his breath
+taken away so suddint like. Let's get out into the rolling prairie of
+Central Park."
+
+But the rest of the afternoon was rather a failure. The Park had that
+peculiar bleakness that foreruns the first promise of spring. The
+children, that six weeks before were playing in the snow and six weeks
+later would be searching the turf for dandelions, were in the listless
+between seasons state of comparative inactivity. There was a deceptive
+balminess in the air that seemed merely to overlay a penetrating
+chilliness.
+
+"I'm sorry I'm not more entertaining this afternoon," Jimmie
+apologized on the way home. "It isn't that I am not happy, or that I
+don't feel the occasion to be more than ordinarily propitious; I'm
+silent upon a peak in Darien,--that's all."
+
+"I was thinking of something else, too," Eleanor said.
+
+"I didn't say I was thinking of something else."
+
+"People are always thinking of something else when they aren't talking
+to each other, aren't they?"
+
+"Something else, or each other, Eleanor. I wasn't thinking of
+something else, I was thinking--well, I won't tell you exactly--at
+present. A penny for your thoughts, little one."
+
+"They aren't worth it."
+
+"A penny is a good deal of money. You can buy joy for a penny."
+
+"I'm afraid I couldn't--buy joy, even if you gave me your penny, Uncle
+Jimmie."
+
+"You might try. My penny might not be like other pennies. On the other
+hand, your thoughts might be worth a fortune to me."
+
+"I'm afraid they wouldn't be worth anything to anybody."
+
+"You simply don't know what I am capable of making out of them."
+
+"I wish I could make something out of them," Eleanor said so
+miserably that Jimmie was filled with compunction for having tired her
+out, and hailed a passing taxi in which to whiz her home again.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I have found out that Uncle Peter is spending all his time with Aunt
+Beulah," she wrote in her diary that evening. "It is beautiful of him
+to try to help her through this period of nervous collapse, and just
+like him, but I don't understand why it is that he doesn't come and
+tell me about it, especially since he is getting so tired. He ought to
+know that I love him so dearly and deeply that I could help him even
+in helping her. It isn't like him not to share his anxieties with me.
+Aunt Beulah is a grown up woman, and has friends and doctors and
+nurses, and every one knows her need. It seems to me that he might
+think that I have no one but him, and that whatever might lie heavy on
+my heart I could only confide in him. I have always told him
+everything. Why doesn't it occur to him that I might have something to
+tell him now? Why doesn't he come to me?
+
+"I am afraid he will get sick. He needs a good deal of exercise to
+keep in form. If he doesn't have a certain amount of muscular
+activity his digestion is not so good. There are two little creases
+between his eyes that I never remember seeing there before. I asked
+him the other night when he was here with Aunt Beulah if his head
+ached, and he said 'no,' but Aunt Beulah said her head ached almost
+all the time. Of course, Aunt Beulah is important, and if Uncle Peter
+is trying to bring her back to normality again she is important to
+him, and that makes her important to me for his sake also, but nobody
+in the world is worth the sacrifice of Uncle Peter. Nobody, nobody.
+
+"I suppose it's a part of his great beauty that he should think so
+disparagingly of himself. I might not love him so well if he knew just
+how dear and sweet and great his personality is. It isn't so much what
+he says or does, or even the way he looks that constitutes his charm,
+it's the simple power and radiance behind his slightest move. Oh! I
+can't express it. He doesn't think he is especially fine or beautiful.
+He doesn't know what a waste it is when he spends his strength upon
+somebody who isn't as noble in character as he is,--but I know, and it
+makes me wild to think of it. Oh! why doesn't he come to me? My
+vacation is almost over, and I don't see how I could bear going back
+to school without one comforting hour of him alone.
+
+"I intended to write a detailed account of my vacation, but I can not.
+Uncle Jimmie has certainly tried to make me happy. He is so funny and
+dear. I could have so much fun with him if I were not worried about
+Uncle Peter!
+
+"Uncle David says he wants to spend my last evening with me. We are
+going to dine here, and then go to the theater together. I am going to
+try to tell him how I feel about things, but I am afraid he won't give
+me the chance. Life is a strange mixture of things you want and can't
+have, and things you can have and don't want. It seems almost disloyal
+to put that down on paper about Uncle David. I do want him and love
+him, but oh!--not in that way. Not in that way. There is only one
+person in a woman's life that she can feel that way about.
+Why--why--why doesn't my Uncle Peter come to me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE MAKINGS OF A TRIPLE WEDDING
+
+
+"Just by way of formality," David said, "and not because I think any
+one present"--he smiled on the five friends grouped about his dinner
+table--"still takes our old resolution seriously, I should like to be
+released from the anti-matrimonial pledge that I signed eight years
+ago this November. I have no announcement to make as yet, but when I
+do wish to make an announcement--and I trust to have the permission
+granted very shortly--I want to be sure of my technical right to do
+so."
+
+"Gosh all Hemlocks!" Jimmie exclaimed in a tone of such genuine
+confusion that it raised a shout of laughter. "I never thought of
+that."
+
+"Nor I," said Peter. "I never signed any pledge to that effect."
+
+"We left you out of it, Old Horse, regarding you as a congenital
+celibate anyway," Jimmie answered.
+
+"Some day soon you will understand how much you wronged me," Peter
+said with a covert glance at Beulah.
+
+"I wish I could say as much," Jimmie sighed, "since this is the hour
+of confession I don't mind adding that I hope I may be able to soon."
+
+Gertrude clapped her hands softly.
+
+"Wonderful, wonderful!" she cried. "We've the makings of a triple
+wedding in our midst. Look into the blushing faces before us and hear
+the voice that breathed o'er Eden echoing in our ears. This is the
+most exciting moment of my life! Girls, get on your feet and drink to
+the health of these about-to-be Benedicts. Up in your chairs,--one
+slipper on the table. Now!"--and the moment was saved.
+
+Gertrude had seen Margaret's sudden pallor and heard the convulsive
+catching of her breath,--Margaret rising Undine-like out of a filmy,
+pale green frock, with her eyes set a little more deeply in the
+shadows than usual. Her quick instinct to the rescue was her own
+salvation.
+
+David was on his feet.
+
+"On behalf of my coadjutors," he said, "I thank you. All this is
+extremely premature for me, and I imagine from the confusion of the
+other gentlemen present it is as much, if not more so, for them.
+Personally I regret exceedingly being unable to take you more fully
+into my confidence. The only reason for this partial revelation is
+that I wished to be sure that I was honorably released from my oath of
+abstinence. Hang it all! You fellows say something," he concluded,
+sinking abruptly into his chair.
+
+"Your style always was distinctly mid-Victorian," Jimmie murmured.
+"I've got nothing to say, except that I wish I had something to say
+and that if I _do_ have something to say in the near future I'll
+create a real sensation! When Miss Van Astorbilt permits David to link
+her name with his in the caption under a double column cut in our
+leading journals, you'll get nothing like the thrill that I expect to
+create with my modest announcement. I've got a real romance up my
+sleeve."
+
+"So've I, Jimmie. There is no Van Astorbilt in mine."
+
+"Some simple bar-maid then? A misalliance in our midst. Now about you,
+Peter?"
+
+"The lady won't give me her permission to speak," Peter said. "She
+knows how proud and happy I shall be when I am able to do so."
+
+Beulah looked up suddenly.
+
+"It is better we should marry," she said. "I didn't realize that when
+I exacted that oath from you. It is from the intellectual type that
+the brains to carry on the great work of the world must be
+inherited."
+
+"I pass," Jimmie murmured. "Where's the document we signed?"
+
+"I've got it. I'll destroy it to-night and then we may all consider
+ourselves free to take any step that we see fit. It was really only as
+a further protection to Eleanor that we signed it."
+
+"Eleanor will be surprised, won't she?" Gertrude suggested. Three
+self-conscious masculine faces met her innocent interrogation.
+
+"_Eleanor_," Margaret breathed, "_Eleanor_."
+
+"I rather think she will," Jimmie chuckled irresistibly, but David
+said nothing, and Peter stared unseeingly into the glass he was still
+twirling on its stem.
+
+"Eleanor will be taken care of just the same," Beulah said decisively.
+"I don't think we need even go through the formality of a vote on
+that."
+
+"Eleanor will be taken care of," David said softly.
+
+The Hutchinsons' limousine--old Grandmother Hutchinson had a motor
+nowadays--was calling for Margaret, and she was to take the two other
+girls home. David and Jimmie--such is the nature of men--were
+disappointed in not being able to take Margaret and Gertrude
+respectively under their accustomed protection.
+
+"I wanted to talk to you, Gertrude," Jimmie said reproachfully as she
+slipped away from his ingratiating hand on her arm.
+
+"I thought I should take you home to-night, Margaret," David said;
+"you never gave me the slip before."
+
+"The old order changeth," Gertrude replied lightly to them both, as
+she preceded Margaret into the luxurious interior.
+
+"It's Eleanor," Gertrude announced as the big car swung into Fifth
+Avenue.
+
+"Which is Eleanor?" Margaret cried hysterically.
+
+"What do you mean?" Beulah asked.
+
+"Jimmie or David--or--or both are going to marry Eleanor. Didn't you
+see their faces when Beulah spoke of her?"
+
+"David wants to marry Eleanor," Margaret said quietly. "I've known it
+all winter--without realizing what it was I knew."
+
+"Well, who is Jimmy going to marry then?" Beulah inquired.
+
+"Who is Peter going to marry for that matter?" Gertrude cut in. "Oh!
+it doesn't make any difference,--we're losing them just the same."
+
+"Not necessarily," Beulah said. "No matter what combinations come
+about, we shall still have an indestructible friendship."
+
+"Indestructible friendship--shucks," Gertrude cried. "The boys are
+going to be married--married--married! Marriage is the one thing that
+indestructible friendships don't survive--except as ghosts."
+
+"It should be Peter who is going to marry Eleanor," Margaret said.
+"It's Peter who has always loved her best. It's Peter she cares for."
+
+"As a friend," Beulah said, "as her dearest friend."
+
+"Not as a friend," Margaret answered softly, "she loves him. She has
+always loved him. It comes early sometimes."
+
+"I don't believe it. I simply don't believe it."
+
+"I believe it," Gertrude said. "I hadn't thought of it before. Of
+course, it must be Peter who is going to marry her."
+
+"If it isn't we've succeeded in working out a rather tragic
+experiment," Margaret said, "haven't we?"
+
+"Life is a tragic experiment for any woman," Gertrude said
+sententiously.
+
+"Peter doesn't intend to marry Eleanor," Beulah persisted. "I happen
+to know."
+
+"Do you happen to know who he is going to marry?"
+
+"Yes, I do know, but I--I can't tell you yet."
+
+"Whoever it is, it's a mistake," Margaret said. "It's our little
+Eleanor he wants. I suppose he doesn't realize it himself yet, and
+when he does it will be too late. He's probably gone and tied himself
+up with somebody entirely unsuitable, hasn't he, Beulah?"
+
+"I don't know," Beulah said; "perhaps he has. I hadn't thought of it
+that way."
+
+"It's the way to think of it, I know." Margaret's eyes filled with
+sudden tears. "But whatever he's done it's past mending now. There'll
+be no question of Peter's backing out of a bargain--bad or good, and
+our poor little kiddie's got to suffer."
+
+"Beulah took it hard," Gertrude commented, as they turned up-town
+again after dropping their friend at her door. The two girls were
+spending the night together at Margaret's. "I wonder on what grounds.
+I think besides being devoted to Eleanor, she feels terrifically
+responsible for her. She isn't quite herself again either."
+
+"She is almost, thanks to Peter."
+
+"But--oh! I can't pretend to think of anything else,--who--who--who--are
+our boys going to marry?"
+
+"I don't know, Gertrude."
+
+"But you care?"
+
+"It's a blow."
+
+"I always thought that you and David--"
+
+Margaret met her eyes bravely but she did not answer the implicit
+question.
+
+"I always thought that you and Jimmie--" she said presently. "Oh!
+Gertrude, you would have been so good for him."
+
+"Oh! it's all over now," Gertrude said, "but I didn't know that a
+living soul suspected me."
+
+"I've known for a long time."
+
+"Are you really hurt, dear?" Gertrude whispered as they clung to each
+other.
+
+"Not really. It could have been--that's all. He could have made me
+care. I've never seen any one else whom I thought that of. I--I was so
+used to him."
+
+"That's the rub," Gertrude said, "we're so used to them. They're
+so--so preposterously necessary to us."
+
+Late that night clasped in each other's arms they admitted the extent
+of their desolation. Life had been robbed of a magic,--a mystery. The
+solid friendship of years of mutual trust and understanding was the
+background of so much lovely folly, so many unrealized possibilities,
+so many nebulous desires and dreams that the sudden dissolution of
+their circle was an unthinkable calamity.
+
+"We ought to have put out our hands and taken them if we wanted them,"
+Gertrude said, out of the darkness. "Other women do. Probably these
+other women have. Men are helpless creatures. They need to be firmly
+turned in the right direction instead of being given their heads.
+We've been too good to our boys. We ought to have snitched them."
+
+"I wouldn't pay that price for love," Margaret said. "I couldn't. By
+the time I had made it happen I wouldn't want it."
+
+"That's my trouble too," Gertrude said. Then she turned over on her
+pillow and sobbed helplessly. "Jimmie had such ducky little curls,"
+she explained incoherently. "I do this sometimes when I think of them.
+Otherwise, I'm not a crying woman."
+
+Margaret put out a hand to her; but long after Gertrude's breath began
+to rise and fall regularly, she lay staring wide-eyed into the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ELEANOR HEARS THE NEWS
+
+
+"Dear Uncle Jimmie:
+
+"I said I would write you, but now that I have taken this hour in
+which to do it, I find it is a very, very hard letter that I have got
+to write. In the first place I can't believe that the things you said
+to me that night were real, or that you were awake and in the world of
+realities when you said them. I felt as if we were both dreaming; that
+you were talking as a man does sometimes in delirium when he believes
+the woman he loves to be by his side, and I was listening the same
+way. It made me very happy, as dreams sometimes do. I can't help
+feeling that your idea of me is a dream idea, and the pain that you
+said this kind of a letter would give you will be merely dream pain.
+It is a shock to wake up in the morning and find that all the lovely
+ways we felt, and delicately beautiful things we had, were only dream
+things that we wouldn't even understand if we were thoroughly awake.
+
+"In the second place, you can't want to marry your little niecelet,
+the funny little 'kiddo,' that used to burn her fingers and the
+beefsteak over that old studio gas stove. We had such lovely kinds of
+make-believe together. That's what our association always ought to
+mean to us,--just chumship, and wonderful and preposterous _pretends_.
+I couldn't think of myself being married to you any more than I could
+Jack the giant killer, or Robinson Crusoe. You're my truly best and
+dearest childhood's playmate, and that is a great deal to be, Uncle
+Jimmie. I don't think a little girl ever grows up quite _whole_ unless
+she has somewhere, somehow, what I had in you. You wouldn't want to
+marry Alice in Wonderland, now would you? There are some kinds of
+playmates that can't marry each other. I think that you and I are that
+kind, Uncle Jimmie.
+
+"My dear, my dear, don't let this hurt you. How can it hurt you, when
+I am only your little adopted foster child that you have helped
+support and comfort and make a beautiful, glad life for? I love you so
+much,--you are so precious to me that you _must_ wake up out of this
+distorted, though lovely dream that I was present at!
+
+"We must all be happy. Nobody can break our hearts if we are strong
+enough to withhold them. Nobody can hurt us too much if we can find
+the way to be our bravest all the time. I know that what you are
+feeling now is not real. I can't tell you how I know, but I do know
+the difference. The roots are not deep enough. They could be pulled up
+without too terrible a havoc.
+
+"Uncle Jimmie, dear, believe me, believe me. I said this would be a
+hard letter to write, and it has been. If you could see my poor
+inkstained, weeping face, you would realize that I am only your funny
+little Eleanor after all, and not to be taken seriously at all. I hope
+you will come up for my graduation. When you see me with all the other
+lumps and frumps that are here, you will know that I am not worth
+considering except as a kind of human joke.
+
+"Good-by, dear, my dear, and God bless you.
+
+"Eleanor."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was less than a week after this letter to Jimmie that Margaret
+spending a week-end in a town in Connecticut adjoining that in which
+Eleanor's school was located, telephoned Eleanor to join her
+overnight at the inn where she was staying. She had really planned the
+entire expedition for the purpose of seeing Eleanor and preparing her
+for the revelations that were in store for her, though she was
+ostensibly meeting a motoring party, with which she was going on into
+the Berkshires.
+
+She started in abruptly, as was her way, over the salad and cheese in
+the low studded Arts and Crafts dining-room of the fashionable road
+house, contrived to look as self-conscious as a pretty woman in new
+sporting clothes.
+
+"Your Uncle David and your Uncle Jimmie are going to be married," she
+told her. "Did you know it, Eleanor?"
+
+"No, I didn't," Eleanor said faintly, but she grew suddenly very
+white.
+
+"Aren't you surprised, dear? David gave a dinner party one night last
+week in his studio, and announced his intentions, but we don't know
+the name of the lady yet, and we can't guess it. He says it is not a
+society girl."
+
+"Who do you think it is?"
+
+"Who do you think it is, Eleanor?"
+
+"I--I can't think, Aunt Margaret."
+
+"We don't know who Jimmie is marrying either. The facts were merely
+insinuated, but he said we should have the shock of our lives when we
+knew."
+
+"When did he tell you?"
+
+"A week ago last Wednesday. I haven't seen him since."
+
+"Perhaps he has changed his mind by now," Eleanor said.
+
+"I don't think that's likely. They were both very much in earnest.
+Aren't you surprised, Eleanor?"
+
+"I--I don't know. Don't you think it might be that they both just
+thought they were going to marry somebody--that really doesn't want to
+marry them? It might be all a mistake, you know."
+
+"I don't think it's a mistake. David doesn't make mistakes."
+
+"He might make one," Eleanor persisted.
+
+Margaret found the rest of her story harder to tell than she had
+anticipated. Eleanor, wrapped in the formidable aloofness of the
+sensitive young, was already suffering from the tale she had come to
+tell,--why, it was not so easy to determine. It might be merely from
+the pang of being shut out from confidences that she felt should have
+been shared with her at once.
+
+She waited until they were both ready for bed (their rooms were
+connecting)--Eleanor in the straight folds of her white dimity
+nightgown, and her two golden braids making a picture that lingered in
+Margaret's memory for many years. "It would have been easier to tell
+her in her street clothes," she thought. "I wish her profile were not
+so perfect, or her eyes were shallower. How can I hurt such a lovely
+thing?"
+
+"Are the ten Hutchinsons all right?" Eleanor was asking.
+
+"The ten Hutchinsons are very much all right. They like me better now
+that I have grown a nice hard Hutchinson shell that doesn't show my
+feelings through. Haven't you noticed how much more like other people
+I've grown, Eleanor?"
+
+"You've grown nicer, and dearer and sweeter, but I don't think you're
+very much like anybody else, Aunt Margaret."
+
+"I have though,--every one notices it. You haven't asked me anything
+about Peter yet," she added suddenly.
+
+The lovely color glowed in Eleanor's cheeks for an instant.
+
+"Is--is Uncle Peter well?" she asked. "I haven't heard from him for a
+long time."
+
+"Yes, he's well," Margaret said. "He's looking better than he was for
+a while. He had some news to tell us too, Eleanor."
+
+Eleanor put her hand to her throat.
+
+"What kind of news?" she asked huskily.
+
+"He's going to be married too. It came out when the others told us. He
+said that he hadn't the consent of the lady to mention her name yet.
+We're as much puzzled about him as we are about the other two."
+
+"It's Aunt Beulah," Eleanor said. "It's Aunt Beulah."
+
+She sat upright on the edge of the bed and stared straight ahead of
+her. Margaret watched the light and life and youth die out of the face
+and a pitiful ashen pallor overspread it.
+
+"I don't think it's Beulah," Margaret said. "Beulah knows who it is,
+but I never thought of it's being Beulah herself."
+
+"If she knows--then she's the one. He wouldn't have told her first if
+she hadn't been."
+
+"Don't let it hurt you too much, dear. We're all hurt some, you know.
+Gertrude--and me, too, Eleanor. It's--it's pain to us all."
+
+"Do you mean--Uncle David, Aunt Margaret?"
+
+"Yes, dear," Margaret smiled at her bravely.
+
+"And does Aunt Gertrude care about Uncle Jimmie?"
+
+"She has for a good many years, I think."
+
+Eleanor covered her face with her hands.
+
+"I didn't know that," she said. "I wish somebody had told me." She
+pushed Margaret's arm away from her gently, but her breath came hard.
+"Don't touch me," she cried, "I can't bear it. You might not want
+to--if you knew. Please go,--oh! please go--oh! please go."
+
+As Margaret closed the door gently between them, she saw Eleanor throw
+her head back, and push the back of her hand hard against her mouth,
+as if to stifle the rising cry of her anguish.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning Eleanor was gone. Margaret had listened for hours in
+the night but had heard not so much as the rustle of a garment from
+the room beyond. Toward morning she had fallen into the sleep of
+exhaustion. It was then that the stricken child had made her escape.
+"Miss Hamlin had found that she must take the early train," the clerk
+said, "and left this note for Miss Hutchinson." It was like Eleanor to
+do things decently and in order.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Aunt Margaret," her letter ran. "My grandmother used to say that
+some people were trouble breeders. On thinking it over I am afraid
+that is just about what I am,--a trouble breeder.
+
+"I've been a worry and bother and care to you all since the beginning,
+and I have repaid all your kindness by bringing trouble upon you.
+Perhaps you can guess what I mean. I don't think I have any right to
+tell you exactly in this letter. I can only pray that it will be found
+to be all a mistake, and come out right in the end. Surely such
+beautiful people as you and Uncle David can find the way to each
+other, and can help Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Gertrude, who are a little
+blinder about life. Surely, when the stumbling block is out of the
+way, you four will walk together beautifully. Please try, Aunt
+Margaret, to make things as right as if I had never helped them to go
+wrong. I was so young, I didn't know how to manage. I shall never be
+that kind of young again. I grew up last night, Aunt Margaret.
+
+"You know the other reason why I am going. Please do not let any one
+else know. If the others could think I had met with some accident,
+don't you think that would be the wisest way? I would like to arrange
+it so they wouldn't try to find me at all, but would just mourn for me
+naturally for a little while. I thought of sticking my old cap in the
+river, but I was afraid that would be too hard for you. There won't be
+any use in trying to find me. I am going where you can not. I couldn't
+ever bear seeing one of your faces again. I have done too much harm.
+Don't let Uncle Peter _know_, please, Aunt Margaret. I don't want him
+to know,--I don't want to hurt him, and I don't want him to know.
+
+"Oh! I have loved you all so much. Good-by, my dears, my dearests. I
+have taken all of my allowance money. Please forgive me.
+
+"Eleanor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE SEARCH
+
+
+Eleanor had not bought a ticket at the station, Margaret ascertained,
+but the ticket agent had tried to persuade her to. She had thanked him
+and told him that she preferred to buy it of the conductor. He was a
+lank, saturnine individual and had been seriously smitten with
+Eleanor's charms, it appeared, and the extreme solicitousness of his
+attitude at the suggestion of any mystery connected with her departure
+made Margaret realize the caution with which it would be politic to
+proceed. She had very little hope of finding Eleanor back at the
+school, but it was still rather a shock when she telephoned the school
+office and found that there was no news of her there. She concocted a
+somewhat lame story to account for Eleanor's absence and promised the
+authorities that she would be sent back to them within the week,--a
+promise she was subsequently obliged to acknowledge that she could not
+keep. Then she fled to New York to break the disastrous news to the
+others.
+
+She told Gertrude the truth and showed her the pitiful letter Eleanor
+had left behind her, and together they wept over it. Also together,
+they faced David and Jimmie.
+
+"She went away," Margaret told them, "both because she felt she was
+hurting those that she loved and because she herself was hurt."
+
+"What do you mean?" David asked.
+
+"I mean--that she belonged body and soul to Peter and to nobody else,"
+Margaret answered deliberately.
+
+David bowed his head. Then he threw it back again, suddenly.
+
+"If that is true," he said, "then I am largely responsible for her
+going."
+
+"It is I who am responsible," Jimmie groaned aloud. "I asked her to
+marry me and she refused me."
+
+"I asked her to marry me and didn't give her the chance to refuse,"
+David said; "it is that she is running away from."
+
+"It was Peter's engagement that was the last straw," Margaret said.
+"The poor baby withered and shrank like a flower in the blast when I
+told her that."
+
+"The damned hound--" Jimmie said feelingly and without apology. "Who's
+he engaged to anyway?"
+
+"Eleanor says it's Beulah, and the more I think of it the more I think
+that she's probably right."
+
+"That would be a nice mess, wouldn't it?" Gertrude suggested.
+"Remember how frank we were with her about his probable lack of
+judgment, Margaret? I don't covet the sweet job of breaking it to
+either one of them."
+
+Nevertheless she assisted Margaret to break it to them both late that
+same afternoon at Beulah's apartment.
+
+"I'll find her," Peter said briefly. And in response to the halting
+explanation of her disappearance that Margaret and Gertrude had done
+their best to try to make plausible, despite its elliptical nature, he
+only said, "I don't see that it makes any difference why she's gone.
+She's gone, that's the thing that's important. No matter how hard we
+try we can't really figure out her reason till we find her."
+
+"Are you sure it's going to be so easy?" Gertrude asked. "I
+mean--finding her. She's a pretty determined little person when she
+makes up her mind. Eleanor's threats are to be taken seriously. She
+always makes good on them."
+
+"I'll find her if she's anywhere in the world," Peter said. "I'll find
+her and bring her back."
+
+Margaret put out her hand to him.
+
+"I believe that you will," she said. "Find out the reason that she
+went away, too, Peter."
+
+Beulah pulled Gertrude aside.
+
+"It wasn't Peter, was it?" she asked piteously. "She had some one else
+on her mind, hadn't she?"
+
+"She had something else on her mind," Gertrude answered gravely, "but
+she had Peter on her mind, too."
+
+"She didn't--she couldn't have known about us--Peter and me. We--we
+haven't told any one."
+
+"She guessed it, Beulah. She couldn't bear it. Nobody's to blame. It's
+just one of God's most satirical mix-ups."
+
+"I was to blame," Beulah said slowly. "I don't believe in shifting
+responsibility. I got her here in the first place and I've been
+instrumental in guiding her life ever since. Now, I've sacrificed her
+to my own happiness."
+
+"It isn't so simple as that," Gertrude said; "the things we start
+going soon pass out of our hands. Somebody a good deal higher up has
+been directing Eleanor's affairs for a long time,--and ours too, for
+that matter."
+
+"Don't worry, Beulah," Peter said, making his way to her side from the
+other corner of the room where he had been talking to Margaret. "You
+mustn't let this worry you. We've all got to be--soldiers now,--but
+we'll soon have her back again, I promise you."
+
+"And I promise you," Beulah said chokingly, "that if you'll get her
+back again, I--I will be a soldier."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter began by visiting the business schools in New York and finding
+out the names of the pupils registered there. Eleanor had clung firmly
+to her idea of becoming an editorial stenographer in some magazine
+office, no matter how hard he had worked to dissuade her. He felt
+almost certain she would follow out that purpose now. There was a fund
+in her name started some years before for the defraying of her college
+expenses. She would use that, he argued, to get herself started, even
+though she felt constrained to pay it back later on. He worked on this
+theory for some time, even making a trip to Boston in search for her
+in the stenography classes there, but nothing came of it.
+
+Among Eleanor's effects sent on from the school was a little red
+address book containing the names and addresses of many of her former
+schoolmates at Harmon. Peter wrote all the girls he remembered hearing
+her speak affectionately of, but not one of them was able to give him
+any news of her. He wrote to Colhassett to Albertina's aunt, who had
+served in the capacity of housekeeper to Eleanor's grandfather in his
+last days, and got in reply a pious letter from Albertina herself, who
+intimated that she had always suspected that Eleanor would come to
+some bad end, and that now she was highly soothed and gratified by the
+apparent fulfillment of her sinister prognostications.
+
+Later he tried private detectives, and, not content with their
+efforts, he followed them over the ground that they covered, searching
+through boarding houses, and public classes of all kinds; canvassing
+the editorial offices of the various magazines Eleanor had admired in
+the hope of discovering that she had applied for some small position
+there; following every clue that his imagination, and the acumen of
+the professionals in his service, could supply;--but his patient
+search was unrewarded. Eleanor had apparently vanished from the
+surface of the earth. The quest which had seemed to him so simple a
+matter when he first undertook it, now began to assume terrible and
+abortive proportions. It was unthinkable that one little slip of a
+girl untraveled and inexperienced should be able permanently to elude
+six determined and worldly adult New Yorkers, who were prepared to tax
+their resources to the utmost in the effort to find her,--but the fact
+remained that she was missing and continued to be missing, and the
+cruel month went by and brought them no news of her.
+
+The six guardians took their trouble hard. Apart from the emotions
+that had been precipitated by her developing charms, they loved her
+dearly as the child they had taken to their hearts and bestowed all
+their young enthusiasm and energy and tenderness upon. She was the
+living clay, as Gertrude had said so many years before, that they had
+molded as nearly as possible to their hearts' desire. They loved her
+for herself, but one and all they loved her for what they had made of
+her--an exquisite, lovely young creature, at ease in a world that
+might so easily have crushed her utterly if they had not intervened
+for her.
+
+They kept up the search unremittingly, following false leads and
+meeting with heartbreaking discouragements and disappointments. Only
+Margaret had any sense of peace about her.
+
+"I'm sure she's all right," she said; "I feel it. It's hard having her
+gone, but I'm not afraid for her. She'll work it out better than we
+could help her to. It's a beautiful thing to be young and strong and
+free, and she'll get the beauty out of it."
+
+"I think perhaps you're right, Margaret," David said. "You almost
+always are. It's the bread and butter end of the problem that worries
+me."
+
+Margaret smiled at him quaintly.
+
+"The Lord provides," she said. "He'll provide for our ewe lamb, I'm
+sure."
+
+"You speak as if you had it on direct authority."
+
+"I think perhaps I have," she said gravely.
+
+Jimmie and Gertrude grew closer together as the weeks passed, and the
+strain of their fruitless quest continued. One day Jimmie showed her
+the letter that Eleanor had written him.
+
+"Sweet, isn't she?" he said, as Gertrude returned it to him, smiling
+through her tears.
+
+"She's a darling," Gertrude said fervently. "Did she hurt you so much,
+Jimmie dear?"
+
+"I wanted her," Jimmie answered slowly, "but I think it was because I
+thought she was mine,--that I could make her mine. When I found she
+was Peter's,--had been Peter's all the time, the thought somehow cured
+me. She was dead right, you know. I made it up out of the stuff that
+dreams are made of. God knows I love her, but--but that personal thing
+has gone out of it. She's my little lost child,--or my sister. A man
+wants his own to be his own, Gertrude."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"My--my real trouble is that I'm at sea again. I thought that I
+cared,--that I was anchored for good. It's the drifting that plays the
+deuce with me. If the thought of that sweet child and the grief at her
+loss can't hold me, what can? What hope is there for me?"
+
+"I don't know," Gertrude laughed.
+
+"Don't laugh at me. You've always been on to me, Gertrude, too much so
+to have any respect for me, I guess. You've got your work," he waved
+his arm at the huge cast under the shadow of which they were sitting,
+"and all this. You can put all your human longings into it. I'm a poor
+rudderless creature without any hope or direction." He buried his face
+in his hands. "You don't know it," he said, with an effort to conceal
+the fact that his shoulders were shaking, "but you see before you a
+human soul in the actual process of dissolution."
+
+Gertrude crossed her studio floor to kneel down beside him. She drew
+the boyish head, rumpled into an irresistible state of curliness, to
+her breast.
+
+"Put it here where it belongs," she said softly.
+
+"Do you mean it?" he whispered. "Sure thing? Hope to die? Cross your
+heart?"
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"Praise the Lord."
+
+"I snitched him," Gertrude confided to Margaret some days later,--her
+whole being radiant and transfigured with happiness. "You snitch
+David."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE YOUNG NURSE
+
+
+The local hospital of the village of Harmonville, which was ten miles
+from Harmon proper, where the famous boarding-school for young ladies
+was located, presented an aspect so far from institutional that but
+for the sign board tacked modestly to an elm tree just beyond the
+break in the hedge that constituted the main entrance, the gracious,
+old colonial structure might have been taken for the private residence
+for which it had served so many years.
+
+It was a crisp day in late September, and a pale yellow sun was spread
+thin over the carpet of yellow leaves with which the wide lawn was
+covered. In the upper corridor of the west wing, grouped about the
+window-seat with their embroidery or knitting, the young nurses were
+talking together in low tones during the hour of the patients'
+siestas. The two graduates, dark-eyed efficient girls, with skilled
+delicate fingers taking precise stitches in the needlework before
+them, were in full uniform, but the younger girls clustered about
+them, beginners for the most part, but a few months in training, were
+dressed in the simple blue print, and little white caps and aprons, of
+the probationary period.
+
+The atmosphere was very quiet and peaceful. A light breeze blew in at
+the window and stirred a straying lock or two that escaped the
+starched band of a confining cap. Outside the stinging whistle of the
+insect world was interrupted now and then by the cough of a passing
+motor. From the doors opening on the corridor an occasional restless
+moan indicated the inability of some sufferer to take his dose of
+oblivion according to schedule. Presently a bell tinkled a summons to
+the patient in the first room on the right--a gentle little old lady
+who had just had her appendix removed.
+
+"Will you take that, Miss Hamlin?" the nurse in charge of the case
+asked the tallest and fairest of the young assistants.
+
+"Certainly." Eleanor, demure in cap and kerchief as the most ravishing
+of young Priscillas, rose obediently at the request. "May I read to
+her a little if she wants me to?"
+
+"Yes, if you keep the door closed. I think most of the others are
+sleeping."
+
+The little old lady who had just had her appendix out, smiled weakly
+up at Eleanor.
+
+"I hoped 'twould be you," she said, "and then after I'd rung I lay in
+fear and trembling lest one o' them young flipperti-gibbets should
+come, and get me all worked up while she was trying to shift me. I
+want to be turned the least little mite on my left side."
+
+"That's better, isn't it?" Eleanor asked, as she made the adjustment.
+
+"I dunno whether that's better, or whether it just seems better to me,
+because 'twas you that fixed me," the little old lady said. "You
+certainly have got a soothin' and comfortin' way with you."
+
+"I used to take care of my grandmother years ago, and the more
+hospital work I do, the more it comes back to me,--and the better I
+remember the things that she liked to have done for her."
+
+"There's nobody like your own kith and kin," the little old lady
+sighed. "There's none left of mine. That other nurse--that black
+haired one--she said you was an orphan, alone in the world. Well, I
+pity a young girl alone in the world."
+
+"It's all right to be alone in the world--if you just keep busy
+enough," Eleanor said. "But you mustn't talk any more. I'm going to
+give you your medicine and then sit here and read to you."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of her flight from the inn, after a night spent staring
+motionless into the darkness, Eleanor took the train to the town some
+dozen miles beyond Harmonville, where her old friend Bertha Stephens
+lived. To "Stevie," to whom the duplicity of Maggie Lou had served to
+draw her very close in the ensuing year, she told a part of her story.
+It was through the influence of Mrs. Stephens, whose husband was on
+the board of directors of the Harmonville hospital, that Eleanor had
+been admitted there. She had resolutely put all her old life behind
+her. The plan to take up a course in stenography and enter an
+editorial office was to have been, as a matter of course, a part of
+her life closely associated with Peter. Losing him, there was nothing
+left of her dream of high adventure and conquest. There was merely the
+hurt desire to hide herself where she need never trouble him again,
+and where she could be independent and useful. Having no idea of her
+own value to her guardians, or the integral tenderness in which she
+was held, she sincerely believed that her disappearance must have
+relieved them of much chagrin and embarrassment.
+
+Her hospital training kept her mercifully busy. She had the
+temperament that finds a virtue in the day's work, and a balm in its
+mere iterative quality. Her sympathy and intelligence made her a good
+nurse and her adaptability, combined with her loveliness, a general
+favorite.
+
+She spent her days off at the Stephens' home. Bertha Stephens had been
+the one girl that Peter had failed to write to, when he began to
+circulate his letters of inquiry. Her name had been set down in the
+little red book, but he remembered the trouble that Maggie Lou had
+precipitated, and arrived at the conclusion that the intimacy existing
+between Eleanor and Bertha had not survived it. Except that Carlo
+Stephens persisted in trying to make love to her, and Mrs. Stephens
+covertly encouraged his doing so, Eleanor found the Stephens' home a
+very comforting haven. Bertha had developed into a full breasted,
+motherly looking girl, passionately interested in all vicarious
+love-affairs, though quickly intimidated at the thought of having any
+of her own. She was devoted to Eleanor, and mothered her clumsily.
+
+It was still to her diary that Eleanor turned for the relief and
+solace of self-expression.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It is five months to-day," she wrote, "since I came to the hospital.
+It seems like five years. I like it, but I feel like the little old
+woman on the King's Highway. I doubt more every minute if this can be
+I. Sometimes I wonder what 'being I' consists of, anyway. I used to
+feel as if I were divided up into six parts as separate as
+protoplasmic cells, and that each one was looked out for by a
+different cooperative parent. I thought that I would truly be I when I
+got them all together, and looked out for them myself, but I find I am
+no more of an entity than I ever was. The puzzling question of 'what
+am I?' still persists, and I am farther away from the right answer
+than ever. Would a sound be a sound if there were no one to hear it?
+If the waves of vibration struck no human ear, would the sound be in
+existence at all? This is the problem propounded by one of the nurses
+yesterday.
+
+"How much of us lives when we are entirely shut out of the
+consciousness of those whom we love? If there is no one to _realize_
+us day by day,--if all that love has made of us is taken away, what is
+left? Is there anything? I don't know. I look in the glass, and see
+the same face,--Eleanor Hamlin, almost nineteen, with the same bow
+shaped eyebrows, and the same double ridge leading up from her nose to
+her mouth, making her look still very babyish. I pinch myself, and
+find that it hurts just the same as it used to six months ago, but
+there the resemblance to what I used to be, stops. I'm a young nurse
+now in hospital training, and very good at it, too, if I do say it as
+shouldn't; but that's all I am. Otherwise, I'm not anybody _to_
+anybody,--except a figure of romance to good old Stevie, who doesn't
+count in this kind of reckoning. I take naturally to nursing they tell
+me. A nurse is a kind of maternal automaton. I'm glad I'm that, but
+there used to be a lot more of me than that. There ought to be some
+heart and brain and soul left over, but there doesn't seem to be.
+Perhaps I am like the Princess in the fairy story whose heart was an
+auk's egg. Nobody had power to make her feel unless they reached it
+and squeezed it.
+
+"I feel sometimes as if I were dead. I wish I could know whether Uncle
+Peter and Aunt Beulah were married yet. I wish I could know that.
+There is a woman in this hospital whose suitor married some one else,
+and she has nervous prostration, and melancholia. All she does all day
+is to moan and wring her hands and call out his name. The nurses are
+not very sympathetic. They seem to think that it is disgraceful to
+love a man so much that your whole life stops as soon as he goes out
+of it. What of Juliet and Ophelia and Francesca de Rimini? They loved
+so they could not tear their love out of their hearts without
+lacerating them forever. There is that kind of love in the
+world,--bigger than life itself. All the big tragedies of literature
+were made from it,--why haven't people more sympathy for it? Why isn't
+there more dignity about it in the eyes of the world?
+
+"It is very unlucky to love, and to lose that which you cherish, but
+it is unluckier still never to know the meaning of love, or to find
+'Him whom your soul loveth.' I try to be kind to that poor forsaken
+woman. I am sorry for his sake that she calls out his name, but she
+seems to be in such torture of mind and body that she is unable to
+help it.
+
+"They are trying to cut down expenses here, so they have no regular
+cook, the housekeeper and her helper are supposed to do it all. I said
+I would make the desserts, so now I have got to go down-stairs and
+make some fruit gelatin. It is best that I should not write any more
+to-day, anyway."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, after the Thanksgiving holiday, she wrote:
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I saw a little boy butchered to-day, and I shall never forget it. It
+is wicked to speak of Doctor Blake's clean cut work as butchery, but
+when you actually see a child's leg severed from its body, what else
+can you call it?
+
+"The reason that I am able to go through operations without fainting
+or crying is just this: _other people do_. The first time I stood by
+the operating table to pass the sterilized instruments to the
+assisting nurse, and saw the half naked doctors hung in rubber
+standing there preparing to carve their way through the naked flesh of
+the unconscious creature before them, I felt the kind of pang pass
+through my heart that seems to kill as it comes. I thought I died, or
+was dying,--and then I looked up and saw that every one else was ready
+for their work. So I drew a deep breath and became ready too. I don't
+think there is anything in the world too hard to do if you look at it
+that way.
+
+"The little boy loved me and I loved him. We had hoped against hope
+that we would be able to save his poor little leg, but it had to go. I
+held his hand while they gave him the chloroform. At his head sat
+Doctor Hathaway with his Christlike face, draped in the robe of the
+anesthetist. 'Take long breaths, Benny,' I said, and he breathed in
+bravely. It was over quickly. To-morrow, when he is really out of the
+ether, I have got to tell him what was done to him. Something happened
+to me while that operation was going on. He hasn't any mother. I think
+the spirit of the one who was his mother passed into me, and I knew
+what it would be like to be the mother of a son. Benny was not without
+what his mother would have felt for him if she had been at his side.
+I can't explain it, but that is what I felt.
+
+"To-night it is as black as ink outside. There are no stars. I feel as
+if there should be no stars. If there were, there might be some
+strange little bit of comfort in them that I could cling to. I do not
+want any comfort from outside to shine upon me to-night. I have got to
+draw all my strength from a source within, and I feel it welling up
+within me even now.
+
+"I wonder if I have been selfish to leave the people I love so long
+without any word of me. I think Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Beulah and Aunt
+Margaret all had a mother feeling for me. I am remembering to-night
+how anxious they used to be for me to have warm clothing, and to keep
+my feet dry, and not to work too hard at school. All those things that
+I took as a matter of course, I realize now were very significant and
+beautiful. If I had a child and did not know to-night where it would
+lie down to sleep, or on what pillow it would put its head, I know my
+own rest would be troubled. I wonder if I have caused any one of my
+dear mothers to feel like that. If I have, it has been very wicked and
+cruel of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+CHRISTMAS AGAIN
+
+
+The ten Hutchinsons having left the library entirely alone in the hour
+before dinner, David and Margaret had appropriated it and were sitting
+companionably together on the big couch drawn up before the fireplace,
+where a log was trying to consume itself unscientifically head first.
+
+"I would stay to dinner if urged," David suggested.
+
+"You stay," Margaret agreed laconically.
+
+She moved away from him, relaxing rather limply in the corner of the
+couch, with a hand dangling over the farther edge of it.
+
+"You're an inconsistent being," David said. "You buoy all the rest of
+us up with your faith in the well-being of our child, and then you
+pine yourself sick over her absence."
+
+"It's Christmas coming on. We always had such a beautiful time on
+Christmas. It was so much fun buying her presents. It isn't like
+Christmas at all with her gone from us."
+
+"Do you remember how crazy she was over the ivory set?"
+
+"And the bracelet watch?"
+
+"Do you remember the Juliet costume?" David's eyes kindled at the
+reminiscence. "How wonderful she was in it."
+
+Margaret drew her feet up on the couch suddenly, and clasped her hands
+about her knees. David laughed.
+
+"I haven't seen you do that for years," he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Hump yourself in that cryptic way."
+
+"Haven't you?" she said. "I was just wondering--" but she stopped
+herself suddenly.
+
+"Wondering what?" David was watching her narrowly, and perceiving it,
+she flushed.
+
+"This is not my idea of an interesting conversation," she said; "it's
+getting too personal."
+
+"I can remember the time when you told me that you didn't find things
+interesting unless they were personal. 'I like things very personal,'
+you said--in those words."
+
+"I did then."
+
+"What has changed you?" David asked gravely.
+
+"The chill wind of the world, I guess; the most personal part of me is
+frozen stiff."
+
+"I never saw a warmer creature in my life," David protested. "On that
+same occasion you said that being a woman was about like being a field
+of clover in an insectless world. You don't feel that way nowadays,
+surely,--at the rate the insects have been buzzing around you this
+winter. I've counted at least seven, three bees, one or two beetles, a
+butterfly and a worm."
+
+"I didn't know you paid that much attention to my poor affairs."
+
+"I do, though. If you hadn't put your foot down firmly on the worm, I
+had every intention of doing so."
+
+"Had you?"
+
+"I had."
+
+"On that occasion to which you refer I remember I also said that I had
+a queer hunch about Eleanor."
+
+"Margaret, are you deliberately changing the subject?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Then I shall bring the butterfly up later."
+
+"I said," Margaret ignored his interruption, "that I had the feeling
+that she was going to be a storm center and bring some kind of queer
+trouble upon us."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She did, didn't she?"
+
+"I'm not so sure that's the way to put it," David said gravely. "We
+brought queer trouble on her."
+
+"She made--you--suffer."
+
+"She gave my vanity the worst blow it has ever had in its life," David
+corrected her. "Look here, Margaret, I want you to know the truth
+about that. I--I stumbled into that, you know. She was so sweet, and
+before I knew it I had--I found myself in the attitude of making love
+to her. Well, there was nothing to do but go through with it. I wanted
+to, of course. I felt like Pygmalion--but it was all potential,
+unrealized--and ass that I was, I assumed that she would have no other
+idea in the matter. I was going to marry her because I--I had started
+things going, you know. I had no choice even if I had wanted one. It
+never occurred to me that she might have a choice, and so I went on
+trying to make things easy for her, and getting them more tangled at
+every turn."
+
+"You never really--cared?" Margaret's face was in shadow.
+
+"Never got the chance to find out. With characteristic idiocy I was
+keeping out of the picture until the time was ripe. She really ran
+away to get away from the situation I created and she was quite right
+too. If I weren't haunted by these continual pictures of our offspring
+in the bread line, I should be rather glad than otherwise that she's
+shaken us all till we get our breath back. Poor Peter is the one who
+is smashed, though. He hasn't smiled since she went away."
+
+"You wouldn't smile if you were engaged to Beulah."
+
+"Are they still engaged?"
+
+"Beulah has her ring, but I notice she doesn't wear it often."
+
+"Jimmie and Gertrude seem happy."
+
+"They are, gloriously."
+
+"That leaves only us two," David suggested. "Margaret, dear, do you
+think the time will ever come when I shall get you back again?"
+
+Margaret turned a little pale, but she met his look steadily.
+
+"Did you ever lose me?"
+
+"The answer to that is 'yes,' as you very well know. Time was when we
+were very close--you and I, then somehow we lost the way to each
+other. I'm beginning to realize that it hasn't been the same world
+since and isn't likely to be unless you come back to me."
+
+"Was it I who strayed?"
+
+"It was I; but it was you who put the bars up and have kept them
+there."
+
+"Was I to let the bars down and wait at the gate?"
+
+"If need be. It should be that way between us, Margaret, shouldn't
+it?"
+
+"I don't know," Margaret said, "I don't know." She flashed a sudden
+odd look at him. "If--when I put the bars down, I shall run for my
+life. I give you warning, David."
+
+"Warning is all I want," David said contentedly. He could barely reach
+her hand across the intervening expanse of leather couch, but he
+accomplished it,--he was too wise to move closer to her. "You're a
+lovely, lovely being," he said reverently. "God grant I may reach you
+and hold you."
+
+She curled a warm little finger about his.
+
+"What would Mrs. Bolling say?" she asked practically.
+
+"To tell you the truth, she spoke of it the other day. I told her the
+Eleanor story, and that rather brought her to her senses. She wouldn't
+have liked that, you know; but now all the eligible buds are plucked,
+and she wants me to settle down."
+
+"Does she think I'm a settling kind of person?"
+
+"She wouldn't if she knew the way you go to my head," David murmured.
+"Oh, she thinks that you'll do. She likes the ten Hutchinsons."
+
+"Maybe I'd like them better considered as connections of yours,"
+Margaret said abstractedly.
+
+David lifted the warm little finger to his lips and kissed it
+swiftly.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked, as she slipped away from him and
+stood poised in the doorway.
+
+"I'm going to put on something appropriate to the occasion," she
+answered.
+
+When she came back to him she was wearing the most delicate and
+cobwebby of muslins with a design of pale purple passion flowers
+trellised all over it, and she gave him no chance for a moment alone
+with her all the rest of the evening.
+
+Sometime later she showed him Eleanor's parting letter, and he was
+profoundly touched by the pathetic little document.
+
+As the holidays approached Eleanor's absence became an almost
+unendurable distress to them all. The annual Christmas dinner party, a
+function that had never been omitted since the acquisition of David's
+studio, was decided on conditionally, given up, and again decided on.
+
+"We do want to see one another on Christmas day,--we've got presents
+for one another, and Eleanor would hate it if she thought that her
+going away had settled that big a cloud on us. She slipped out of our
+lives in order to bring us closer together. We'll get closer together
+for her sake," Margaret decided.
+
+But the ordeal of the dinner itself was almost more than they had
+reckoned on. Every detail of traditional ceremony was observed even to
+the mound of presents marked with each name piled on the same spot on
+the couch, to be opened with the serving of the coffee.
+
+"I got something for Eleanor," Jimmie remarked shamefacedly as he
+added his contributions to the collection. "Thought we could keep it
+for her, or throw it into the waste-basket or something. Anyhow I had
+to get it."
+
+"I guess everybody else got her something, too," Margaret said. "Of
+course we will keep them for her. I got her a little French party
+coat. It will be just as good next year as this. Anyhow as Jimmie
+says, I had to get it."
+
+"I got her slipper buckles," Gertrude admitted. "She has always wanted
+them."
+
+"I got her the Temple _Shakespeare_," Beulah added. "She was always
+carrying around those big volumes."
+
+"You're looking better, Beulah," Margaret said. "Are you feeling
+better?"
+
+"Jimmie says I'm looking more human. I guess perhaps that's it,--I'm
+feeling more--human. I needed humanizing--even at the expense of
+some--some heartbreak," she said bravely.
+
+Margaret crossed the room to take a seat on Beulah's chair-arm, and
+slipped an arm around her.
+
+"You're all right if you know that," she whispered softly.
+
+"I thought I was going to bring you Eleanor herself," Peter said. "I
+got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My
+faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to
+believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I
+found a strawberry blonde with gold teeth."
+
+"Gosh, you don't think she's doing anything like that," Jimmie
+exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know," Peter said miserably. He was looking ill and unlike
+himself. His deep set gray eyes were sunken far in his head, his brow
+was too white, and the skin drawn too tightly over his jaws. "As a
+de-tec-i-tive, I'm afraid I'm a failure."
+
+"We're all failures for that matter," David said. "Let's have
+dinner."
+
+Eleanor's empty place, set with the liqueur glass she always drank her
+thimbleful of champagne in, and the throne chair from the drawing-room
+in which she presided over the feasts given in her honor, was almost
+too much for them. Margaret cried openly over her soup. Peter shaded
+his eyes with his hand, and Gertrude and Jimmie groped for each
+other's hands under the shelter of the table-cloth.
+
+"This--this won't do," David said. He turned to Beulah on his left,
+sitting immovable, with her eyes staring unseeingly into the
+centerpiece of holly and mistletoe arranged by Alphonse so lovingly.
+"We must either turn this into a kind of a wake, and kneel as we
+feast, or we must try to rise above it somehow."
+
+"I don't see why," Jimmie argued. "I'm in favor of each man howling
+informally as he listeth."
+
+"Let's drink her health anyhow," David insisted. "I cut out the
+Sauterne and the claret, so we could begin on the wine at once in this
+contingency. Here's to our beloved and dear absent daughter."
+
+"Long may she wave," Jimmie cried, stumbling to his feet an instant
+after the others.
+
+While they were still standing with their glasses uplifted, the bell
+rang.
+
+"Don't let anybody in, Alphonse," David admonished him.
+
+They all turned in the direction of the hall, but there was no sound
+of parley at the front door. Eleanor had put a warning finger to her
+lips, as Alphonse opened it to find her standing there. She stripped
+off her hat and her coat as she passed through the drawing-room, and
+stood in her little blue cloth traveling dress between the portieres
+that separated it from the dining-room. The six stood transfixed at
+the sight of her, not believing the vision of their eyes.
+
+"You're drinking my health," she cried, as she stretched out her arms
+to them. "Oh! my dears, and my dearests, will you forgive me for
+running away from you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE LOVER
+
+
+They left her alone with Peter in the drawing room in the interval
+before the coffee, seeing that he had barely spoken to her though his
+eyes had not left her face since the moment of her spectacular
+appearance between the portieres.
+
+"I'm not going to marry you, Peter," Beulah whispered, as she slipped
+by him to the door, "don't think of me. Think of her."
+
+But Peter was almost past coherent thought or speech as they stood
+facing each other on the hearth-rug,--Eleanor's little head up and her
+breath coming lightly between her sweet, parted lips.
+
+"Where did you go?" Peter groaned. "How could you, dear--how could
+you,--how could you?"
+
+"I'm back all safe, now, Uncle Peter. I took up nursing in a
+hospital."
+
+"I didn't even find you. I swore that I would. I've searched for you
+everywhere."
+
+"I'm sorry I made you all that trouble," Eleanor said, "but I thought
+it would be the best thing to do."
+
+"Tell me why," Peter said, "tell me why, I've suffered so
+much--wondering--wondering."
+
+"You've suffered?" Eleanor cried. "I thought it was only I who did the
+suffering."
+
+She moved a step nearer to him, and Peter gripped her hard by the
+shoulders.
+
+"It wasn't that you cared?" he said. Then his lips met hers dumbly,
+beseechingly.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It was all a mistake,--my going away," she wrote some days after. "I
+ought to have stayed at the school, and graduated, and then come down
+to New York, and faced things. I have my lesson now about facing
+things. If any other crisis comes into my life, I hope I shall be as
+strong as Dante was, when he 'showed himself more furnished with
+breath than he was,' and said, 'Go on, for I am strong and resolute.'
+I think we always have more strength than we understand ourselves to
+have.
+
+"I am so wonderfully happy about Uncle David and Aunt Margaret, and I
+know Uncle Jimmie needs Aunt Gertrude and has always needed her. Did
+my going away help those things to their fruition? I hope so.
+
+"I can not bear to think of Aunt Beulah, but I know that I must bear
+to think of her, and face the pain of having hurt her as I must face
+every other thing that comes into my life from this hour. I would give
+her back Peter, if I could,--but I can not. He is mine, and I am his,
+and we have been that way from the beginning. I have thought of him
+always as stronger and wiser than any one in the world, but I don't
+think he is. He has suffered and stumbled along, trying blindly to do
+right, hurting Aunt Beulah and mixing up his life like any man, just
+the way Uncle Jimmie and Uncle David did.
+
+"Don't men know who it is they love? They seem so often to be
+struggling hungrily after the wrong thing, trying to get, or to make
+themselves take, some woman that they do not really want. When women
+love it is not like that with them.
+
+"When women love! I think I have loved Peter from the first minute I
+saw him, so beautiful and dear and sweet, with that _anxious_ look in
+his eyes,--that look of consideration for the other person that is
+always so much a part of him. He had it the first night I saw him,
+when Uncle David brought me to show me to my foster parents for the
+first time. It was the thing I grew up by, and measured men and their
+attitude to women by--just that look in his eyes, that tender warm
+look of consideration.
+
+"It means a good many things, I think,--a gentle generous nature, and
+a tender chivalrous heart. It means selflessness. It means being a
+good man, and one who _protects_ by sheer unselfish instinct. I don't
+know how I shall ever heal him of the hurt he has done Aunt Beulah.
+Aunt Margaret tells me that Aunt Beulah's experience with him has been
+the thing that has made her whole, that she needed to live through the
+human cycle of emotion--of love and possession and renunciation before
+she could be quite real and sound. This may be true, but it is not the
+kind of reasoning for Peter and me to comfort ourselves with. If a
+surgeon makes a mistake in cutting that afterwards does more good than
+harm, he must not let that result absolve him from his mistake.
+Nothing can efface the mistake itself, and Peter and I must go on
+feeling that way about it.
+
+"I want to write something down about my love before I close this book
+to-night. Something that I can turn to some day and read, or show to
+my children when love comes to them. 'This is the way I felt,' I want
+to say to them, 'the first week of my love--this is what it meant to
+me.'
+
+"It means being a greater, graver, and more beautiful person than you
+ever thought you could be. It means knowing what you are, and what you
+were meant to be all at once, and I think it means your chance to be
+purified for the life you are to live, and the things you are to do in
+it. Experience teaches, but I think love forecasts and points the way,
+and shows you what you can be. Even if the light it sheds should grow
+dim after a while, the path it has shown you should be clear to your
+inner eye forever and ever. Having been in a great temple is a thing
+to be better for all your life.
+
+"It means that the soul and the things of the soul are
+everlasting,--that they have got to be everlasting if love is like
+this. Love between two people is more than the simple fact of their
+being drawn together and standing hand in hand. It is the holy truth
+about the universe. It is the rainbow of God's promise set over the
+land. There comes with it the soul's certainty of living on and on
+through time and space.
+
+"Just my loving Peter and Peter's loving me isn't the important
+thing,--the important thing is the way it has started the truth going;
+my knowing and understanding mysterious laws that were sealed to me
+before; Peter taking my life in his hands and making it consecrated
+and true,--so true that I will not falter or suffer from any
+misunderstandings or mistaken pain.
+
+"It means warmth and light and tenderness, our love does, and all the
+poetry in the world, and all the motherliness, (I feel so much like
+his mother). Peter is my lover. When I say that he is not stronger or
+wiser than any one in the world I mean--in living. I mean in the way
+he behaves like a little bewildered boy sometimes. In loving he is
+stronger and wiser than any living being. He takes my two hands in his
+and gives me all the strength and all the wisdom and virtue there is
+in the world.
+
+"I haven't written down anything, after all, that any one could read.
+My children can't look over my shoulder on to this page, for they
+would not understand it. It means nothing to any one in the world but
+me. I shall have to translate for them or I shall have to say to them,
+'Children, on looking into this book, I find I can't tell you what
+love meant to me, because the words I have put down would mean nothing
+to you. They were only meant to inform me, whenever I should turn back
+to them, of the great glory and holiness that fell upon me like a
+garment when love came.'
+
+"And if there should be any doubt in my heart as to the reality of the
+feeling that has come to them in their turn, I should only have to
+turn their faces up to the light, and look into their eyes and
+_know_.
+
+"I shall not die as my own mother did. I know that. I know that Peter
+will be by my side until we both are old. These facts are established
+in my consciousness I hardly know how, and I know that they are
+there,--but if such a thing could be that I should die and leave my
+little children, I would not be afraid to leave them alone in a world
+that has been so good to me, under the protection of a Power that
+provided me with the best and kindest guardians that a little orphan
+ever had. God bless and keep them all, and make them happy."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turn About Eleanor, by Ethel M. Kelley
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