Seventeen Part 10

A small pearl b.u.t.ton.

A tortoise-sh.e.l.l hair-pin.

A cross-section from the heel of a small slipper.

A stringy remnant, probably once an improvised wreath of daisies.

Four or five withered dandelions.

Other dried vegetation, of a nature now indistinguishable.

William gazed reverently upon this junk of precious souvenirs; then from the inner pocket of his coat he brought forth, warm and crumpled, a lumpish cl.u.s.ter of red geranium blossoms, still aromatic and not quite dead, though naturally, after three hours of such intimate confinement, they wore an unmistakable look of suffering. With a tenderness which his family had never observed in him since that piteous day in his fifth year when he tried to mend his broken doll, William laid the geranium blossoms in the cardboard box among the botanical and other relics.

His gentle eyes showed what the treasures meant to him, and yet it was strange that they should have meant so much, because the source of supply was not more than a quarter of a mile distant, and practically inexhaustible. Miss Pratt had now been a visitor at the Parchers'

for something less than five weeks, but she had made no mention of prospective departure, and there was every reason to suppose that she meant to remain all summer. And as any foliage or anything whatever that she touched, or that touched her, was thenceforth suitable for William's museum, there appeared to be some probability that autumn might see it so enlarged as to lack that rarity in the component items which is the underlying value of most collections.

William's writing-table was beside an open window, through which came an insistent whirring, unagreeable to his mood; and, looking down upon the sunny lawn, he beheld three lowly creatures. One was Genesis; he was cutting the gra.s.s. Another was Clematis; he had a.s.sumed a transient att.i.tude, curiously triangular, in order to scratch his ear, the while his anxious eyes never wavered from the third creature.

This was Jane. In one hand she held a little stack of sugar-sprinkled wafers, which she slowly but steadily depleted, unconscious of the increasingly earnest protest, at last nearing agony, in the eyes of Clematis. Wearing unaccustomed garments of fas.h.i.+on and festivity, Jane stood, in speckless, starchy white and a blue sash, watching the lawn-mower spout showers of gra.s.s as the powerful Genesis easily propelled it along over lapping lanes, back and forth, across the yard.

From a height of illimitable loftiness the owner of the cardboard treasury looked down upon the squat commonplaceness of those three lives. The condition of Jane and Genesis and Clematis seemed almost laughably pitiable to him, the more so because they were unaware of it.

They breathed not the starry air that William breathed, but what did it matter to them? The wretched things did not even know that they meant nothing to Miss Pratt!

Clematis found his ear too pliable for any great solace from his foot, but he was not disappointed; he had expected little, and his thoughts were elsewhere. Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer in Jane's external possession.

This incident annoyed William. "Look there!" he called from the window.

"You mean to eat that cake after the dog's had his face on it?"

Jane remained placid. "It wasn't his face."

"Well, if it wasn't his face, I'd like to know what--"

"It wasn't his face," Jane repeated. "It was his nose. It wasn't all of his nose touched it, either. It was only a little outside piece of his nose."

"Well, are you going to eat that cake, I ask you?"

Jane broke off a small bit of the wafer. She gave the bit to Clematis and slowly ate what remained, continuing to watch Genesis and apparently unconscious of the scorching gaze from the window.

"I never saw anything as disgusting as long as I've lived!" William announced. "I wouldn't 'a' believed it if anybody'd told me a sister of mine would eat after--"

"I didn't," said Jane. "I like Clematis, anyway."

"Ye G.o.ds!" her brother cried. "Do you think that makes it any better?

And, BY the WAY," he continued, in a tone of even greater severity, "I'd a like to know where you got those cakes. Where'd you get 'em, I'd just like to inquire?"

"In the pantry." Jane turned and moved toward the house. "I'm goin' in for some more, now."

William uttered a cry; these little cakes were sacred. His mother, growing curious to meet a visiting lady of whom (so to speak) she had heard much and thought more, had asked May Parcher to bring her guest for iced tea, that afternoon. A few others of congenial age had been invited: there was to be a small matinee, in fact, for the honor and pleasure of the son of the house, and the cakes of Jane's onslaught were part of Mrs. Baxter's preparations. There was no telling where Jane would stop; it was conceivable that Miss Pratt herself might go waferless.

William returned the cardboard box to its drawer with reverent haste; then, increasing the haste, but dropping the reverence, he hied himself to the pantry with such advantage of longer legs that within the minute he and the wafers appeared in conjunction before his mother, who was arranging fruit and flowers upon a table in the "living-room."

William entered in the stained-gla.s.s att.i.tude of one bearing gifts.

Overhead, both hands supported a tin pan, well laden with small cakes and wafers, for which Jane was silently but repeatedly and systematically jumping. Even under the stress of these efforts her expression was cool and collected; she maintained the self-possession that was characteristic of her.

Not so with William; his cheeks were flushed, his eyes indignant. "You see what this child is doing?" he demanded. "Are you going to let her ruin everything?"

"Ruin?" Mrs. Baxter repeated, absently, refres.h.i.+ng with fair water a bowl of flowers upon the table. "Ruin?"

"Yes, ruin!" William was hotly emphatic, "If you don't do something with her it 'll all be ruined before Miss Pr-- before they even get here!"

Mrs. Baxter laughed. "Set the pan down, Willie."

"Set it DOWN?" he echoed, incredulously "With that child in the room and grabbing like--"

"There!" Mrs. Baxter took the pan from him, placed it upon a chair, and with the utmost coolness selected five wafers and gave them to Jane.

"I'd already promised her she could have five more. You know the doctor said Jane's digestion was the finest he'd ever misunderstood. They won't hurt her at all, Willie."

This deliberate misinterpretation of his motives made it difficult for William to speak. "Do YOU think," he began, hoa.r.s.ely, "do you THINK--"

"They're so small, too," Mrs. Baxter went on. "SHE probably wouldn't be sick if she ate them all."

"My heavens!" he burst forth. "Do you think I was worrying about--" He broke off, unable to express himself save by a few gestures of despair.

Again finding his voice, and a great deal of it, he demanded: "Do you realize that Miss PRATT will be here within less than half an hour? What do you suppose she'd think of the people of this town if she was invited out, expecting decent treatment, and found two-thirds of the cakes eaten up before she got there, and what was left of 'em all mauled and pawed over and crummy and chewed-up lookin' from some wretched CHILD?" Here William became oratorical, but not with marked effect, since Jane regarded him with unmoved eyes, while Mrs. Baxter continued to be mildly preoccupied in arranging the table. In fact, throughout this episode in controversy the ladies' party had not only the numerical but the emotional advantage. Obviously, the approach of Miss Pratt was not to them what it was to William. "I tell you," he declaimed;--"yes, I tell you that it wouldn't take much of this kind of thing to make Miss Pratt think the people of this town were--well, it wouldn't take much to make her think the people of this town hadn't learned much of how to behave in society and were pretty uncilivized!" He corrected himself.

"Uncivilized! And to think Miss Pratt has to find that out in MY house!

To think--"

"Now, Willie," said Mrs. Baxter, gently, "you'd better go up and brush your hair again before your friends come. You mustn't let yourself get so excited."

"'Excited!'" he cried, incredulously. "Do you think I'm EXCITED?

Ye G.o.ds!" He smote his hands together and, in his despair of her intelligence, would have flung himself down upon a chair, but was arrested half-way by simultaneous loud outcries from his mother and Jane.

"Don't sit on the CAKES!" they both screamed.

Saving himself and the pan of wafers by a supreme contortion at the last instant, William decided to remain upon his feet. "What do I care for the cakes?" he demanded, contemptuously, beginning to pace the floor.

"It's the question of principle I'm talking about! Do you think it's right to give the people of this town a poor name when strangers like Miss PRATT come to vis--"

"Willie!" His mother looked at him hopelessly. "Do go and brush your hair. If you could see how you've tousled it you would."

He gave her a dazed glance and strode from the room.

Jane looked after him placidly. "Didn't he talk funny!" she murmured.

"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Baxter. She shook her head and uttered the enigmatic words, "They do."

"I mean Willie, mamma," said Jane. "If it's anything about Miss Pratt.

he always talks awful funny. Don't you think Willie talks awful funny if it's anything about Miss Pratt, mamma?"

"Yes, but--"