Mother

Madget was sitting on the floor, and singing to herself:

"Don't you think you have sung almost enough, Madget?" Mrs. Swift said. "What's the matter, Elizabeth? Don't you think she has?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was just listening to the sound of your voice, Mother. It's so good to hear it again—saying anything."

"No, I don't," said Madget, pausing between selections only long enough to reply literally to the question addressed to her:

"She certainly has a keen sense of rhythm," Mrs. Swift laughed. "You've grown up so, Elizabeth, I hardly know my child."

"I'm not really a child any longer, Mother, dear."

"I don't suppose you would care to walk down to the block and get a quart of ice-cream so soon after breakfast, would you, dear?"

"Oh, yes, Mother, I can always eat ice-cream." Elizabeth swept the gingham frock she was making for Madget out of her lap and rose hastily.

"I don't think I've quite lost my little girl," Mrs. Swift smiled.

"For that, Mummy, darling, I won't go. You are just playing tricks on me, the way you always do, and I fall right into the trap the way I always do, and oh, it's so good to have it happening again!"

"You may go for ice-cream if you like, but a maturer Elizabeth might prefer to wait until it was a little nearer dinner time. When you sat down, you were going to whip all the seams in that dress before you moved again."

"I want some ice-cream!" wailed Madget.

"You shall have some bye and bye, dear. Don't you know that nice little girls don't shriek like that?" Elizabeth said.

"Dear me," Mrs. Swift laughed, "I think I'll have to make a kindergarten teacher out of you. You have the professionally maternal manner."

"But I have grown older, Mother, and soberer."

"You've taken hold of life better. To tell you the truth, I was worried about you this spring, you seemed to be getting your sense of values so wrong. You were running around with nice, wholesome children enough, but your ideas of life seemed to be growing very artificial. That was one reason I sent you down here by yourself. I was pretty sure that you would learn some of the essential lessons."

"I guess you would have been disappointed if I hadn't, Mother. I might not have. At first I just thought it was all horrid and—common."

"And what, dear?"

Elizabeth hung her head.

"Don't you know that nice little girls don't use that word?"

"There isn't any other that says it."

"That is one of the words which reflect on the user. It's one mostly used by people who have just come to realize that there is a difference in manners."

"It's awful to be a snob, isn't it, Mother?"

"It's unfortunate."

"I've just discovered that I was one. Mother, what do you suppose made me so snobbish about the Cape when I first came down? You're not a snob, and Father isn't, nor Jeanie."

"I am afraid it was the disadvantage of your bringing up, my dear. We had some pretty hard knocks when you were growing up. Your father's advancement came late. We always lived nicely and had the same standards as other people, but we had a greater struggle to maintain them. Our lean years gave you a little sense of inferiority, my dear, that's all."

"Oh, Mother, how much you know and how wise you are! There is something I wish I could tell you about, Mother, dear, but I can't."

"You mean about Buddy and Ruth Farraday?"

"I didn't know you knew," Elizabeth gasped.

"I didn't until the night I came away, and then Buddy told me. It was very brave and dear of him."

"Oh, Mother, what shall we do?" Elizabeth wailed. "Ruthie is going to be married next week. Maybe before Buddy gets here."

"Grandmother told me so last night. I don't think there is anything to do, excepting to let matters take their course."

"But couldn't you go and see Ruth, and tell her?"

"Tell her what? That my boy loves her and that she should have loved him?"

"Well, she should. She almost does, I think. She's just marrying because her dreadful mother——"

"Elizabeth!"

"She is a dreadful mother."

"So are we all sometimes, but it takes our contemporaries to judge us."

"But you are so nice, and she isn't, Mother, dear."

"Elizabeth, if you are in the confidence of the Farraday family in any way that I am not, you must not share that confidence with me."

"But it's Buddy's future we are talking about, and if I know things that will help us to work it out, I think I ought to be allowed to tell them."

"I think I can manage to get a perspective on Buddy's future without gossiping about the Farradays."

"Well, why can't you go and tell Ruthie about Buddy? Tell her he—he loves her, right out?"

"Why didn't you do that, dear?"

"I—I was scared to; besides, it would have been sneaky to Buddy, and——"

"Exactly."

"But now she'll be married if somebody doesn't do something."

"I am afraid there is nothing to be done but sit still and let her be married."

"But how can you, Mother?"

"I don't know how I can, to tell the truth. That's about the hardest thing any mother does, to sit still and let things happen that involve her children, but as your father says, a man's first duty is to mind his own business, and if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

"Oh, dear!" said Elizabeth.

"Oh, dear!" echoed Madget.

"Aren't you happy, Madget?"

"I want some ice-cream and some doughnuts and some cookies and some boiled ham, and I want to come and sit on your lap."

"You may have some ice-cream pretty soon and you may come and sit on my lap now. Will that do?"

"I know who I love," Madget said, pushing aside the folds of gingham and climbing into the coveted place, "but I won't tell."

"Do you want to see the beautiful present that my mother brought me, Madget?"

"I want a beautiful present," said Madget.

"I am going to give you a present," Elizabeth said, "but not now, because you asked for it. It isn't nice to ask for things. You must just wait until people give them to you."

"All right," Madget said, unexpectedly.

"That's the way those children are," Elizabeth explained, seriously, "Moses especially. You tell them what isn't nice, and then they agree with you, and there isn't any argument. It just leaves you feeling flat."

"Madget is only waiting seraphically for her present to come without asking," Mrs. Swift said.

"See what I have!" Elizabeth took a gayly-coloured rubber cape and bathing cap to match from the back of the chair on which she was sitting, and spread them out for the child's inspection. "I carry them around everywhere I go, Mother."

"Rainbows," said Madget, ecstatically.

"It is all the rainbow colours," Elizabeth said, "isn't it lovely, Mother, dear?"

"I'm so glad you like it. I had a bad time making up my mind what to get."

"These capes look so grand when you come out of the water, and it's cold, too, running up to the bath-house. You really need something. Look here."

Madget had insinuated her bobbing curls into the depths of the cap, and then, standing, was swathing herself in the folds of the bright cape.

"She looks like one of the Stewart babies. I don't know why, but I suppose it's that dressed-up look they have. Her hair is clean, because I washed it myself. What are you laughing at, Mother?"

"It seems so extraordinary to have you in charge of a family of children."

"Well, somebody had to take an interest in them. It's Grandmother that takes the real care of them, though. I only help as I can."

Mrs. Swift smiled a smile of deep satisfaction into her embroidery.

"I am very pleased with you, dear," she said.

"Mother," Elizabeth's gaze became fixed out of the window, "a boy comes to call on me sometimes. I don't think you would disapprove, because Grandfather invited him—but there he comes now."

"He looks like a nice boy."

"He is. He's quite sensible, when you get to know him."

"Well, go to the door, Elizabeth. He looks as if he might run away if he wasn't admitted instantly."

"I guess he has heard you're here."

"How do you do?" Tom Robbins said to the widening crack that gave him his glimpse of Elizabeth, "I can't wait till you get the door open."

"How do you do?" said Elizabeth.

"Is Captain Swift at home? I don't want to see him, but I have to ask for him because he told me to."

"No, but my mother is," Elizabeth said.

"Well, I want to see her."

"Here she is, then. Mother," Elizabeth led the way into the living room, "this is Mr. Robbins."

"I'm glad to meet Mr. Robbins. I think that his other name is Tom, or if it isn't it ought to be, for he's the image of the Tom Robbins I knew."

"Father remembers you," Tom cried. "He used to see you when you were first married."

"Take some chairs," Elizabeth said.

"That's our joke," Tom explained, "the first time I came here Captain Swift was so full of fun, and everything——"

"That, well, I got rattled," Elizabeth explained, "so I said, 'take some chairs,' and we always say it now."

"Taking chairs just about describes me when I go into a place. I move around a good deal," Tom said.

"If I could have my present," Madget interrupted from the sofa, "I would be good."

"At dinner time I am going to give it to you."

"All right," Madget said, "I'll go ask Grandma Swift to have my dinner."

"Isn't she cunning?" Tom looked after her as she trotted off. "Oh, Elizabeth, I'm going to give Moses my old bicycle. It isn't doing any one any good now. I'm making him a rack to go in front, that he can carry milk bottles on."

"Grandfather will give him a job carrying milk then," Elizabeth said. "Won't that be fine?"

"It seems to me that you children are quite practical philanthropists. I think you are doing wonders for the Steppes."

"It's all Elizabeth," Tom said, "she's the one that got us all thinking of it. What I came in this morning for is this, Mrs. Swift. Our family is going to give a big, old-fashioned clambake on the beach the first pleasant day after Monday, and we wanted—that is, I did—we thought perhaps Peggy and Elizabeth might like to come. It'll be great fun. Bill and I are going to help dig the clams. Of course it's just a family affair, and I don't know whether Father knows you are in town, Mrs. Swift, but I am sure if you would like to come, too, we should all be so very glad. We thought of Elizabeth and Peggy first, you see." Tom was very confused.

"That's very kind of you, Tom, but I shouldn't be able to go. I am expecting my husband and my sick son almost any day now, and my object in coming ahead of them is to get everything in running order for them, but I am sure Elizabeth would be delighted to go, and I should be very glad for her to."

"Oh, thank you. Mrs. Farraday said that Peggy could come if Elizabeth could. I think it will be pretty good sport. It will be a regular, old-fashioned clambake, you know, with the clams banked in bricks and sand, and all the things wrapped in seaweed and steamed in—in their own steam. We have one every year, and some of our family comes from a long way to be there."

"I think it will be beautiful," Elizabeth said. "I am so glad Mummy will let me go."

"I wish I had my twenty-seven white horses," she sighed, as she watched Tom's retreating figure. "He's nice mannered, isn't he? He always whips off his hat at the gate, just like that. He'd count for one red-head so nicely. I got my ninety-nine Negroes, but the white horses are very hard to get. I've only got four and a half, and I'm not sure it wasn't the same white horse all the time."

"Four and a half white horses?" Mrs. Swift looked up inquiringly.

"A white goat. That's what I mean by half. We saw him one way down in Chatham. I don't really mean to count him unless we get desperate. I don't suppose it's quite fair."

"We have to make a good many compromises in this day and age, but it doesn't seem to me that a goat would make an efficient substitute for a horse. Why stop there? Why not a pig or a bear?"

"Well, I didn't really mean to count him. Peggy and I get discouraged, and then we try to think of encouraging things."

"I haven't seen Peggy yet."

"She's coming soon, but she has to help Ruth make that dreadful trousseau. I'm going upstairs and get Madget's doll, and then I'm going to telephone and see where she is."

Solemnly seated on the floor in the guest chamber, Elizabeth found Madget contemplating the Little Red Riding Hood doll that Mrs. Swift had brought for her. It stood upright on the bureau and returned her gaze complacently.

"Is that my present?" Madget said. "I want it."

"You shouldn't have come upstairs without being sent, Madget."

"I was sent. You sent me for a thimble."

"But that was yesterday."

"Here it is," Madget said, producing it with a wide smile.

"Yes, that's your present," Elizabeth said in despair. "Take it."

Madget took it.

"My baby dolly!" she cried.

As Elizabeth started downstairs again, she heard Peggy's voice.

"You don't need to telephone," Peggy cried, from the sitting room, "I came and I brought the bride along with me, what there is left of her."

"I didn't know it was going to be quite so much trouble to be married," Ruth Farraday was saying, "perhaps if I had, I wouldn't have attempted it."

"Well, this is the last marriage I can ever have in my family," Peggy said, "unless I ever take the fatal step myself, which I won't. You're just the same, aren't you, Elizabeth? You can only have one outside of your own."

"I don't think Buddy will ever marry," Elizabeth said, looking at Ruth Farraday.

"My son is coming to-morrow or the next day," Mrs. Swift said, hastily, "we hope that Cape Cod is really going to make him well again."

"He'll be here in time for the wedding," Peggy said, "if he is invited."

"We were planning to have only the family," Ruth said, "but not having two sisters to add the proper touch of picturesqueness, I asked Elizabeth to stand with Peggy."

"She never opened her mouth," said the incorrigible Peggy, indicating herself, "excepting to put her foot into it."

"Hush, Peggy," said Ruth, whitening a little, "Mrs. Swift understands. Peggy regards this wedding as a sort of cross between a picnic and a visit to the dentist's."

"I certainly do," said Peggy, "only you don't have to have so many clothes on those occasions. I don't see why you can't just be married in what you've got. Well, anyway, that clambake is going to be a ray of light through the gloom. That's something we can enjoy without any mixture of our emotions."

"I shall have to come some day without Peggy," Ruth said, rising, "this time we were just going by to the post office and she dragged me in."

"She gets a letter every mail," Peggy explained, "and sometimes two a mail. If you think I've said awful things, Mrs. Swift, I'm sorry, but—but——"

"I assure you they are nothing to the things she could say," Ruth laughed. "I'm glad she has Elizabeth's restraining influence. I suppose the two are so different that that's the reason they get on so well."

"Elizabeth's a perfect lady," Peggy said.

Mrs. Swift stood at the window and watched the two girls go down the path, Ruth's pink linen and close-fitting white sweater outlining her extreme slenderness and her little feet set with a delicate deliberation as she moved.

"She is an apple-blossom girl," she said, thoughtfully, "poor Buddy!"

"Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother," Elizabeth wailed, flinging her arms around her, "isn't it perfectly terrible? I am so glad you are here. I don't believe I could have borne it another minute without you."

"Well, now, I guess you're satisfied," Grandfather said, coming in on this tableau. "I guess you've got about all you need to make you happy, ain't you?"

Elizabeth threw a forlorn glance at her mother.

"I need other things to make me happy," she said, "but I'm perfectly satisfied with this darling person, all the same."