The conduct of the children at the luncheon table was marked by such
unexampled propriety of manner that Mrs. Van Duser was visibly
disappointed. She could hardly have been expected to know that Elizabeth
had resorted to shameless bribery in advance of the meal with a shining
coin in each small pocket, "to be spent exactly as you choose," and that
Richard was taking his food in the kitchen under the lax supervision of
the Norwegian maid. Still the occasion was not wholly barren of material
for a trained psychologist, as Mrs. Van Duser was pleased to term
herself.
"The psychophysical processes," she observed learnedly, "should be
closely observed by the wise guardian, in order to properly graft
desired complications on native reactions."
"I am afraid I do not altogether understand," murmured Elizabeth,
secretly grateful that her guest's preoccupation of mind rendered her
oblivious to the blunders of Celia, as she plodded heavily about the
table. "But I should like to ask you, Mrs. Van Duser, if you approve
of--whipping children?"
Mrs. Van Duser dropped her pencil and focussed her piercing regard upon
the wife of her distant relative.
"Decidedly not, my dear Elizabeth," she enunciated in her deepest
contralto. "Corporal punishment brutalises the child by implying that a
rational being is, or may be, on the level of the animal. It can be only
too evident that if one treats a child like an animal, it will behave
like an animal. I will send you an excellent pamphlet on the subject,
which you will do well to study. In the meantime you should
remember----"
Mrs. Van Duser stopped short, raised her lorgnette and stared hard at
Doris. That young person had suddenly left her chair and was whispering
in her mother's ear, in the peculiar, sibilant whisper of an eager
child.
"I'm through of my dinner, mother," was wafted distinctly to the
attentive ears of the guest. "An' I want to go an' buy daddy's 'fumery
this minute. You said I might, mother; you said I might.--Yes; but
_when_ is she going home, mother? _when?_"
Far from evincing displeasure the great lady displayed the sincerest
gratification. "A most interesting example of ideation," she observed.
"My dear Elizabeth, please explain the child's emotions, if you are
aware of them. I fail to observe anger or dislike, or even--as might
well be expected--awe. Why do you wish me to go home?" she inquired
directly of Doris, who had retreated behind her mother's chair in
pouting dismay.
Elizabeth experienced a hysterical desire to laugh; but she instantly
repressed it. "You should explain to Mrs. Van Duser, Doris, that you
spilled father's bay-rum this morning, and that mother said you must buy
him a fresh bottle with your own money," she said soberly.
"I want to go _now_," whispered the child. "You said I might, mother;
you _promised_!"
"Excellent!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Duser, writing rapidly in her book. "You
really ought, my dear Elizabeth, to preserve a careful memoranda of
these interesting mental movements of your offspring," she observed
convincingly. "Every properly constructed parent should endeavour to so
assist science. However crudely and unscientifically expressed, such
records would prove of incalculable value to the student."
She turned to Doris with a complete change of manner. It was no longer
the ontological Mrs. Van Duser, but the great lady from Beacon Street
who spoke. "You have been very rude indeed, my child," she said sternly;
"and little girls should never be rude; but I will take you with me in
the carriage to purchase the toilet article referred to, and send you
home afterwards, if your mother will permit."
As Elizabeth watched the flushed and triumphant Doris, departing in
state in the Van Duser carriage, the jingling contents of her bank in
her small pocket, she was conscious of a bewildering sense of failure.
She had sincerely tried to impress a lesson of obedience and a respect
for the rights of others upon the mind of her child, and, lo! the
culprit was enjoying a long-wished-for treat!
The arrival of Miss Evelyn Tripp, in a hansom cab with a small
much-belabelled trunk on top, successfully diverted her mind from this
and other ethical problems. Miss Tripp's recent misfortunes had as yet
left no traces on her slight, elegant personality. She entered quite in
her old fashion, amid a subdued rustle of soft silken garments, a
flutter of plumes and a gracious odour of violets.
"My dear!" she exclaimed, clasping and kissing Elizabeth, quite in the
latest mode. "How well you are looking! Indeed, you are younger and far,
far prettier than the day you were married! How vividly I remember that
day, and I am sure you do! How I did work to have everything pass off as
it should, and so many persons have told me since that it was really the
sweetest wedding they ever saw! It hardly seems possible that it was so
long ago. What! You don't tell me that great boy is Carroll! Come here
and let Aunty Evelyn kiss you, dear. And Doris? She was such a dear,
tiny thing when I saw her last. Oh, that is the baby; you say! No;
Elizabeth--not that great child! Fancy! I declare I feel like a
Methuselah when I look at my friend's children. I hate to grow
old--really old; don't you know."
Miss Tripp paused to remove her plumed hat, while Elizabeth hastened to
assure her friend that she really hadn't changed in the least. This was
quite true, since Miss Tripp was of that somewhat thin and colourless
type of American womanhood upon which the passing years appear to leave
little trace.
"Oh, my dear!" sighed Miss Tripp, "I am changed; everything has changed
with me, I assure you. Mother and I are obliged to live off air, exactly
like wee little church mice. And I am simply worn to a fringe trying to
economise and manage. I never was extravagant; you know that, dear, but
now----. Well; I don't know what will become of us unless something
happens."
"Something will happen, dear," said Elizabeth, more than ever
warm-heartedly determined to make her friend as happy as herself. "Now
I'm going to leave you to lie down and rest a little before dinner," she
added guilefully, as she bethought herself of the various culinary
operations already in progress under the unthinking control of Celia. "A
friend of Sam's--a Mr. Hickey, chances to be dining here to-night; I
hope you won't mind, dear. It--just happened so."
Miss Tripp turned to gaze searchingly at her friend. "You can't mean
George Hickey--a civil engineer?" she asked.
"Why, yes; do you know him?"
"My dear; it's the oddest thing; but lately I seem to meet that man
wherever I go. He is a friend of the Gerald Doolittles in
Dorchester--you know who I mean--and spends a Sunday there occasionally;
and when I was visiting Leticia Marston last fall, lo and behold! Mr.
Hickey turned up there for the week end! I used to know him years ago
when we were both children."
"Sam is associated with Mr. Hickey in a professional way," observed
Elizabeth, with a careful indifference of manner. "He dines with us once
in a while." She paused to listen, with her head on one side, while a
look of alarm stole over her attentive face.
"What's the matter, dear?" inquired the unaccustomed Miss Tripp. "Do you
hear anything?"
"No, Evelyn; I don't, and the silence is suspicious. I think I'll run
down stairs and see what the boys are doing. Try and rest, dear, till I
call you." And Elizabeth accomplished a hasty exit by way of the back
stairs and the kitchen, where she was in time to frustrate the
intelligent Celia as she was about putting the French peas over to boil
an hour before dinner time. From thence she sought the sitting-room,
where she had left her two sons amicably engaged in constructing a tall
and wobbly tower out of building blocks. Carroll had vanished, and her
amazed and indignant eyes lighted upon the person of her youngest son
kneeling in a chair before the forbidden aquarium, over which he leaned
in a state of rapturous oblivion of past experiences, his plump hands
buried in the sand at the bottom of the tank, while the alarmed gold
fish flashed in and out between the dripping sleeves of his
freshly-ironed blouse.
"Richard Brewster!" she cried. Then wrath and a disheartening sense of
the futility of unassisted moral suasion quite swept her off her feet.
She seized the child and laying him across her lap in time-honoured
fashion, handed down from a remote ancestry, spanked him with a speed
and thoroughness not to be surpassed by Grandmother Carroll in her most
energetic mood.