“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 139 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 protÉgÉe? 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.” 140

“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. 141

“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 protÉgÉe 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. 142

“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 143 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.” 144

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. 145

“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 146 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. 147

“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 148 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 149 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 150 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 151 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. 152

“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 153 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 ingÉnue, 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 154 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.” 155

“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. 156 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.” 157

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 fiancÉe—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.