THE TRAINING BEGINS
It was very early, but May was in the garden. The sun was just rising
and the morning glories on the back porch turned their purple and rose
and white cups to catch the welcome light. The sky was full of rosy
clouds; dew glittered on the waving grass and dancing flowers, and the
birds were singing as they only sing at dawn.
"What a lovely world this is!" cried May aloud. "If my uncle liked me I
should be almost too happy this morning."
"He doesn't dislike you, dear," said Sarah, who had come up softly
behind May and had thus overheard her words. May grasped her kind
friend by the hand and said, earnestly,—
"I thought that I wouldn't apologize. I have changed my mind, or the
dark changed it for me. I think it is perfectly wonderful, how the
dark, so still and black, will make you willing to do things that
you've said ever so many times in the daytime that you wouldn't do! I
am going to apologize because I'm ashamed of myself. Not because he
shut me up in my room—I hope he will understand that. I got up early
to get braced up for it by the air, and the flowers and the morning."
Sarah understood the feeling that prompted May's early rising; the
hours just after dawn have more of inspiration in them than a whole
library of books about right living and thinking.
"The General is in the library; why don't you go now?" asked Sarah,
brightly.
"I will; and I will be as full of good humor as father and as gentle as
mother."
This was undertaking a good deal, but May was in earnest; and to be in
earnest is to be armed against almost any enemy.
Much to her own surprise Sarah bent and kissed the mock boy. "Now
scamper!" said she. "And come and tell me how well you have kept your
word."
The General was reading. A hundred lines of Greek before breakfast was
his daily appetizer and he had just completed fifty when May slid into
the room.
"Good morning, Uncle Harold!" said she.
"Good morning, my young sir," said the General, with a smile, for "the
dark" had worked its marvels with him as well as with May.
The smile settled it!—as a smile will often settle trifling differences
if it be allowed—May did not wait for further advances, but sprang into
the General's arms and promptly kissed him! The General was amazed,
and showed it. He had never been kissed by a child, and his sensations
when May's fresh, dewy lips were laid on his were bewildering in their
variety. He was embarrassed, of course, for old bachelors are not used
to kisses; he was saddened, too, but he was not displeased, and May
knew it.
Suddenly a sense of the difference between his life as it was, with
its calm, but narrow routine of pleasures, its moments of dulness
unbrightened by the companionship of wife and the warm lips and
clinging arms of children, and the life that might have been his had
he not allowed his youth to slip past him, awoke in him a sting of
disgust, of self-pity.
"I hope you are not offended," May said, timidly, for the General's
silence was oppressive. "We always kiss mother and father good
morning—and—I thought you might like to be treated as well."
"I do like being 'treated as well,'" said the General, heartily.
"I didn't come in for just that; I came to tell you that I am sorry I
was so rude to you yesterday. I hope you will excuse me."
"Certainly I will."
"I remembered last night that mother once said something about what
people ought to do when they were guests in anybody's house. She said
it to Alice, not to me, but it was something like this: 'No matter how
disagreeable people are when you are visiting them you must always
bear it and never resent or mention it to anybody'—and I don't mean to
again."
This ingenuous statement amused the General vastly. "That is excellent
advice and worthy of your good mother," said he.
"Mother's advice is always excellent," said May, proudly. "When it is
hard to take, the way she says it—so calm and sweet—takes the sting
out. I don't think we need to learn much except what mother tells us."
"Always think so, my boy," said the General, brokenly.
"Your mother must have been like mine," hazarded May. "How much you
must have loved her!"
To speak of his beloved mother was to make a short cut to the General's
heart, and at that moment May could have demanded and received any boon
of him.
"You were reading when I came in," said May, after a brief pause. "I
hope I am not interrupting you."
"Not at all; I learned my lesson fifty years ago and I have not
forgotten it."
"What were you reading?" asked May, who was a sad chatterbox when at
ease.
"I was reading a classic—do you know what that means?"
"Oh, yes; a classic is a book in a leather binding. Alice studies in
them, and I think there must be something very sad inside for I've
often seen her crying over them."
"Classics are touching tales to youth. What would you think, Gay, of a
goddess who corrected her children with a thunderbolt?"
"I should think that must have been worse than nurse's slipper. What
was the goddess' name?"
"Juno."
"Did Juno call her thunderbolt a 'persuader'? That's what nurse called
her slipper. Mother wouldn't let nurse use it and nurse didn't like it
very well. She said it had been used on little Lord Roslyn and I guess
she really thought it was too good to use on us because we haven't
titles. But mother didn't believe in a persuader, even if it had
persuaded a little English lord, and I'm sure we didn't!"
"I should say not!"
"Oh, Uncle Harold, I came near forgetting to tell you that my training
can begin any time you like. I think father will be delighted if I go
home with all my defects remedied."
"We will begin right after breakfast," said the General, delighted with
this acquiescence.
"Breakfast is ready, sir," said Phyllis at the door.
"Phyllis," cried May in delight, "my uncle has forgiven me, and we are
friends—great friends, aren't we, Uncle Harold?"
"Yes, my boy."
"Well," said Phyllis to herself, "it does beat the Dutch how that boy
twists round a body's heart!"
"I'm a little hungry, aren't you?" suggested May, with a smile.
Extraordinary spell of a child's face—of its candid smile! The General
forgot his dignity, his rigid ideas of deportment; he bent and kissed
May's brow, then he said, "Come, dear."
These were strange words for him to speak; he had never said "dear" in
his life except as he had coupled it with mother, and he said it under
his breath.
May got down from the General's knees and took his hand. "We will go
this way to show Miss Sarah that we are friends—I told her that I
thought you didn't like me."
As they went along, hand in hand, the General felt awkward. It was the
simplest thing in the world to make an excuse for withdrawing his hand,
but like many simple things this was hard to do. May's fingers clung
to his, and they seemed to have some mysterious connection with May's
kiss; both were seals of the new bond between them.
"Miss Sarah!" cried May at the dining-room door, "look at us! You
wouldn't think we were the enemies of yesterday, would you? Well, we
are not. We are true friends, now—and the training is going to begin
right after breakfast."
The training had already begun on both sides.