April brightened into May before David came to live at the Stuffed
Animal House. Dr. Lavendar had his own reasons for the delay, which he
did not share with anybody, but they resulted in a sort of intimacy,
which Helena, eager for the child, could not refuse.
"He needs clothes," Dr. Lavendar put her off; "I can't let him visit
you till Mary gets his wardrobe to rights."
"Oh, let me get his little things."
--Now, who would have supposed that Dr. Lavendar was so deep! To begin
with, he was a man, and an old man, at that; and with never a chick or
a child of his own. How did he know what a child's little clothes are
to a woman?--"Well," he said, "suppose you make him a set of
night-drawers."
Helena's face fell. "I don't know how to sew. I thought I could buy
what he needed."
"No; he has enough bought things, but if you will be so kind, my dear,
as to make--"
"I will!" she promised, eagerly, and Dr. Lavendar said he would bring
David up to be measured.
Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and happiness; it brought
Dr. Lavendar and David up to the Stuffed Animal House very often, "to
try on." David's coming was always a delight, but the old man fretted
her, somehow;--he was so good. She said so to William King, who laughed
at the humor of a good woman's objection to goodness. The incongruity
of such a remark from her lips was as amusing as a child's innocently
base comment.
[Illustration: Her sewing was a pathetic blunder of haste and
happiness. _Awakening of Helena Richie_]
William had fallen into the habit of drawing up and calling out "good
morning" whenever he and his mare passed her gate. Mrs. Richie's lack
of common sense seemed to delight the sensible William. When he was
with her, he was in the frame of mind that finds everything a joke. It
was a demand for the eternal child in her, to which, involuntarily, she
responded. She laughed at him, and even teased him about his shabby
buggy with a gayety that made him tingle with pleasure. She used to
wonder at herself as she did it--conscious and uneasy, and resolving
every time that she would not do it again. She had none of this
lightness with any one else. With Dr. Lavendar she was reserved to the
point of coldness, and with young Sam Wright, matter-of-fact to a
discouraging degree.
But she did not see Sam often in the next month. It had occurred to Sam
senior that Adam Smith might cure the boy's taste for 'bosh'; so, by
his father's orders, his Sunday afternoons were devoted to _The Wealth
of Nations_. As for his evenings, his grandfather took possession of
them. Benjamin Wright's proposal that the young man should go away for
a while, had fallen flat; Sam replying, frankly, that he did not care
to leave Old Chester. As Mr. Wright was not prepared to give any
reasons for urging his plan, he dropped it; and instead on Sunday
nights detained his grandson to listen to this or that drama or poem
until the boy could hardly hide his impatience. When he was free and
could hurry down the hill road, as often as not the lights were out in
the Stuffed Animal House, and he could only linger at the gate and
wonder which was her window. But when he did find her, he had an
evening of passionate delight, even though occasionally she snubbed
him, lazily.
"Do you go out in your skiff much?" she asked once; and when he
answered, "No; I filled it with stones and sunk it, because you didn't
like rowing," she spoke to him with a sharpness that surprised herself,
though it produced no effect whatever on Sam.
"You are a very foolish boy! What difference does it make whether I
like rowing or not?"
Sam smiled placidly, and said he had had hard work to get stones enough
to fill the skiff. "I put them in," he explained, "and then I sculled
out in mid-stream, and scuttled her. I had to swim ashore. It was
night, and the water was like flowing ink, and there was a star in
every ripple," he ended dreamily.
"Sam," she said, "if you don't stop being so foolish, I won't let you
come and see me."
"Am I a nuisance about my drama?" he asked with alarm.
"Not about your drama," she said significantly; but Sam was too happy
to draw any unflattering deductions.
When old Mr. Wright discovered that his stratagem of keeping his
grandson late Sunday evenings had not checked the boy's acquaintance
with Mrs. Richie, he tried a more direct method. "You young ass! Can't
you keep away from that house? She thinks you are a nuisance!"
"No, grandfather," Sam assured him earnestly, "she doesn't. I asked
her, and she said--"
"Asked her?" roared the old man, "Do you expect a female to tell the
truth?" And then he swore steadily for a minute. "I'll have to see
Lavendar," he said despairingly.
But Mr. Wright's cause was aided by some one stronger than Dr.
Lavendar. Helena's attention was so fixed on the visitor who was coming
to the Stuffed Animal House that Sam's conversation ceased to amuse
her. Those little night-drawers on which she pricked her fingers
interested her a thousand times more than did his dramatic visions.
They interested her so much that sometimes she could almost forget that
Lloyd Pryor's visit was delayed. For though it was the first of May, he
had not come again. "I am so busy," he wrote; "it is impossible for me
to get away. I suppose David will have his sling all ready for me when
I do arrive?"
Helena was sitting on the porch with her clumsy needlework when Sarah
brought her the letter, and after she had read it, she tore it up
angrily. "He was in Mercer a week ago; I know he was, because there is
always that directors' meeting on the last Thursday in April, so he
must have been there. And he wouldn't come!" Down in the orchard the
apple-trees were in blossom, and when the wind stirred, the petals fell
in sudden warm white showers; across the sky, from west to east, was a
path of mackerel clouds. It was a pastel of spring--a dappled sky,
apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All about
her were the beginnings of summer--the first exquisite green of young
leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths;
horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending
at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the sun.
Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the house
would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either side of
the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. But just now it was
overflowing with May sunshine. "Oh, he _would_ enjoy it if he would
only come," she thought. Well, anyhow, David would like it; and she
began to fell her seam with painstaking unaccustomed fingers.
The child was to come that day. Half a dozen times she dropped her work
to run to the gate, and shielding her eyes with her hand looked down
the road to Old Chester, but there was no sign of the jogging hood of
the buggy. Had anything happened? Was he sick? _Had Dr. Lavendar
changed his mind?_ Her heart stood still at that. She debated whether
or not she should go down to the Rectory and find out what the delay
meant? Then she called to one of the servants who was crossing the
hall, that she wondered why the little boy who was to visit her, did
not come. Her face cleared at the reminder that the child went to
school in the morning.
"Why, of course! I suppose he will have to go every morning?" she added
ruefully.
"My," Maggie said smiling, "you're wan that ought to have six!"
Mrs. Richie smiled, too. Then she said to herself that she wouldn't let
him go to school every day; she was sure he was not strong enough. She
ventured something like this to Dr. Lavendar when, about four o'clock,
Goliath and the buggy finally appeared.
"Strong enough?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He's strong enough to study a
great deal harder than he does, the little rascal! I'm afraid Rose
Knight will spoil him; she's almost as bad as Ellen Bailey. You didn't
know our Ellen, did ye? No; she'd married Spangler and gone out West
before you came to us. Ah, a dear woman, but wickedly unselfish. Rose
Knight took the school when Spangler took Ellen." Then he added one or
two straight directions: Every school-day David was to come to the
Rectory for his dinner, and to Collect Class on Saturdays. "You will
have to keep him at his catechism," said Dr. Lavendar; "he is weak on
the long answers."
"Oh!" Helena said, rather startled; "you don't want me to teach
him--things like that, do you?"
"Things like what?"
"The catechism, and--to pray, and--"
Dr. Lavendar smiled. "You can teach folks to say their prayers, my
dear, but nobody can teach them to pray. Only life does that. But
David's been taught his prayers; you just let him say 'em at your knee,
that's all."
David, dismissed to the garden while his elders talked, had discovered
the rabbit-hutch, and could hardly tear himself away from it to say
good-by. But when Dr. Lavendar called out that he was going, the little
boy's heart misgave him. He came and stood by the step of the buggy,
and picked with nervous fingers at the dry mud on the wheel--for Dr.
Lavendar's buggy was not as clean as it should have been.
"Well, David?" Dr. Lavendar said cheerfully. The child with his chin
sunk on his breast said something. "What?" said Dr. Lavendar.
David mumbled a word or two in a voice that seemed to come from his
stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not
hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found
him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the
wooden bars. Their white shell-like ears wavered at her step, and they
paused in their nibbling; then went on again with timid, jewel-like
glances in her direction.
Helena, at the sight of those two tears, knelt down beside the little
boy, eager to be sympathetic. But he did not notice her, and by and by
the tears dried up. After she had tried to make him talk;--of Dr.
Lavendar, of school, of his old home;--without drawing anything more
from him than "yes ma'am," or "no ma'am," she gave it up and waited
until he should be tired of the rabbits. The sun was warm, the smell of
the crushed dock leaves heavy in the sheltered corner behind the barn;
it was so silent that they could hear the nibbling of the two
prisoners, who kept glancing at them with apprehensive eyes that
gleamed with pale red fires. David sighed with joy.
"What are their names?" he said at last in a low voice.
"They haven't any names; you can name them if you like."
"I shall call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith," he said with decision. And then
fell silent again.
"You came to Old Chester in the stage with Mr. Pryor," she said after a
while; "he told me you were a very nice little boy."
"How did he know?" demanded David.
"He is very nice himself," Helena said smiling.
David meditated. "Is that gentleman my enemy?"
"Of course not! he isn't anybody's enemy," she told him reprovingly.
David turned silently to his rabbits.
"Why did you think he was your enemy?" she persisted.
"I only just hoped he wasn't; I don't want to love him."
"What!"
"If he was my enemy, I'd have to love him, you know," David explained
patiently.
Helena in her confused astonishment knew not what to reply. She
stammered something about that being wrong; of course David must love
Mr. Pryor!
"They ought to have fresh water," David interrupted thoughtfully; and
Helena had to reach into the hutch for a battered tin pan.
She watched him run to the stable and come back, holding the pan in
both hands and walking very slowly under the mottled branches of the
button-woods; at every step the water splashed over the rusty brim, and
the sunshine, catching and flickering in it, was reflected in a
rippling gleam across his serious face.
All that afternoon he permitted her to follow him about. He was gently
polite when she spoke to him but he hardly noticed her until, as they
went down through the orchard, his little hand tightened suddenly on
hers, and he pressed against her skirts.
"Are there snakes in this grass?" he asked timorously. "A snake," he
added, looking up at her confidingly, "is the only insect I am afraid
of."
She stooped down and cuddled him reassuringly, and he rewarded her by
snuggling up against her like a friendly puppy. She was very happy. As
it grew dusk and cool, and all the sky was yellow behind the black line
of the hills, she lured him into the house and watched him eat his
supper, forgetting to eat her own.
When she took him up-stairs to bed, Dr. Lavendar's directions came back
to her with a slight shock--she must hear him say his prayers. How was
she to introduce the subject? The embarrassed color burned in her
cheeks as she helped him undress and tried to decide on the proper
moment to speak of--prayers. But David took the matter into his own
hands. As he stepped into his little night-clothes, buttoning them
around his waist with slow precision, he said:
"Now I'll say my prayers. Sit by the window; then I can see that star
when I open my eyes. It's hard to keep your eyes shut so long, ain't
it?" he added confidentially.
Helena sat down, her heart fluttering in her throat. David knelt beside
her, shutting first one eye and then the other. "'Now I lay me--"' he
began in a businesslike voice. At the Amen he opened his eyes and drew
a long breath. Helena moved slightly and he shut his eyes again; "I've
not done yet.
"'Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless Thy little lamb to-night--'"
He paused and looked up at Mrs. Richie. "Can I say colt?" Before she
could reply he decided for himself. "No; colts don't have shepherds; it
has to be lamb."
Her silent laughter did not disturb him. He finished with another
satisfied Amen. Helena put her arms about him to raise him from the
floor, but he looked up, aggrieved.
"Why, I've not done yet," he reproached her "You've forgot the
blessings."
"The blessings?" she asked timidly.
"Why, of course," said David, trying to be patient; "but I'm most
done," he encouraged her. "God bless everybody--Dr. Lavendar taught me
the new blessings," he interrupted himself, his eyes snapping open,
"because my old blessings were all gone to heaven. God bless everybody;
Dr. Lavendar, an' Mary, an' Goliath--" Helena laughed. "He said I
could," David defended himself doggedly--"an' Danny, an' Dr. King, an'
Mrs. Richie. And make me a good boy. For Jesus' sake Amen. Now I'm
done!" cried David, scrambling happily to his feet.
"And--Mr. Pryor, too? Won't you ask God to bless Mr. Pryor?"
"But," said David, frowning, "I'm done."
"After this, though, it would be nice--"
"Well," David answered coldly, "God can bless him if He wants to. But
He needn't do it just to please me."