Getting acquainted is part and parcel of buying a house. There is
something in the human chest that yearns for speaking terms, at least
with the fellow who is liable to lend you his lawn mower or by whose
wife you may some day be called upon for emergency aid in the culinary
department.
Our good friends came out, it's true, and last night Kittie and Lucy
Eugenie sat on the porch, and afterward had iced tea and peanut
sandwiches in the kitchen, but I mean the regular acquaintance of the
long day that makes the wife forget distances and isolation.
Whooping cough was our visiting card.
I got acquainted with the nearest neighbor through the courtesy of his
advice when I made some fool remark about the nature of the ground for
light gardening, and he gave me the benefit of his information to the
contrary. We knew one family so intimately that we could almost nod as
we passed without fear of being snubbed--but not a soul called,
inquired, or seemed to care. It was the busy time, and we didn't mind so
much then. When things lightened up on the labor end we would begin to
notice it.
And then we brought Lydie out for the air. Poor little thing! She
whooped and whooped and whooped. In the middle of the night she whooped,
and she whooped in the morning. She would stop doing almost anything
else to run to her auntie and whoop. She knew her responsibility. In the
city she had gone from door to door ringing bells and gravely informing
the occupants that their children mustn't play with her, because it was
catching. She ran her quarantine strictly, but, of course, our new
community sharers didn't know that.
The groceryman, milkman, iceman, paper boy, the plumber, carpenter,
stableman--all manner of men who circulate--learned that Lydie had the
whooping cough. It wasn't long before our neighbors began to take
notice--I mean our neighbors several houses removed, and across the
street. We already knew our nearest neighbors, and their stout little
red-haired heir and the little baby that sang miserere in the stilly
night. But the niece with the whooping cough made us talked about and
observed. One day a little girl ran up to Lydie.
"My mamma says I can play with you, 'cause I've had the whooping cough!"
Lydie promptly produced her jumping rope. And then there was another
from the same house, and we discovered, to our joy, that the children of
the horny-handed city editor had also had the whooping cough. We didn't
need an introduction there, but the play privilege was pie for the baby.
First thing I knew baby was on this porch and that porch, and on the way
home in the evening I whistled for her and nodded to the grownups who
were entertaining her.
But we've lost our intermediary. The other night baby whooped and I
whooped. Mine was nervous indigestion, combined with a lot of
imagination that makes the patent medicine business profitable. Between
us, baby and I kept up a merry circus all night. She was really sick,
and we sent her home to her mother.
What a wonderful thing it is to have a baby in the house!
Every morning Catherine and Eleanor go out and pick buttercups and
forget-me-nots, and bring them to my wife; and she puts them in a vase
with the greatest show of gratitude you ever saw, and then proceeds to
stuff the children with cakes until they choke, and sends them home
full.
Every day the little auburn-haired boy king in the House Next Door trots
out with his tiny red wagon and laboriously drags that treasure of
childhood up and down the pavement--sometimes prancing like a race
horse, sometimes plodding along like a mule that curses his ancestry,
sometimes ambling by like a good-natured family horse, guaranteed not to
run away or scare at an automobile!
And the little one--the baby in the go-cart. What a time the baby has
watching Big Brother, and admiring his strength as he performs miracles,
not only pulling and backing the tiny red wagon all by himself, but
actually turning it around and running the other way, without so much as
getting caught in the cracks or stuck in the sod! You can see
admiration fairly oozing from baby's eyes; and when he runs at her and
pretends to kick his heels into the dashboard, what a laugh she has!
Up the street, where the apartments are with the shiny sets of bells on
the front by the door, and the big rocking chairs and air of solid
comfort, there are some other children, but I haven't learned their
names. They play around the porch and front yard, and run across the
street, scampering up the hill to pick flowers from the lots that soon
will feel the plow; and their mothers keep an eye on them--not that any
accident could happen, for vehicles are scarce out our way and the
street car doesn't enter the quiet of our lives; but just
because--well, mothers are a bit peculiar that way--I mean that way of
keeping an eye on the young ones.
A fellow never knows what a remarkable head a child has, if he has none
of his own, until he begins borrowing babies from the neighbors.
There's Catherine, for instance. Catherine and Eleanor and I were
looking for the little pale anemones that hide around the roots of
trees. I picked some four-petaled blue flowers and instructed the
children.
"These," I said, "are forget-me-nots."
"No, they're not," said Catherine promptly. "They are bluettes.
Forget-me-nots have five petals and these have only four."
"Oh!" I said; "and where did you learn that?"
"My teacher told me, and she told me----" which ran into a long lecture
on botany and horticulture and forest-lore and things that made me
ashamed, for, frankly, I didn't know whether the tree that shaded us was
an oak or a maple. I think there should be a limit on male suffrage, and
woman domination, and child education. There are some things that make
the average man feel cheap, if he has pride.
But this is all about the babies, and about the House only indirectly.
We love children, my wife and I, and, perhaps, we love them the more
because we can send them back to where we borrowed them when they become
troublesome. But the most wonderful thing about babies to me is that not
so long ago we were all, you and I and your neighbor, all helpless,
gooing, crowing, dimpling, fat or slim kids, bundled up in carriages and
looking wonder-eyed at the great picture life unfolded before us. And
these babies around us--some of these days they'll be the men and women,
and some of them will borrow babies, and some will cuddle their own.
The babies, God bless 'em!--and the flowers! They are very alike.