"Anyhow," said Mrs. Trescott, determinedly, "that is what you _should_
say to him."
"It wouldn't do the slightest good. It would only make him very angry,
and I would lay myself perfectly open to a suggestion that I had
better attend to my own affairs with more rigor."
"Well, I suppose you are right," Mrs. Trescott again said.
"Why don't you speak to Caroline?" asked the doctor, humorously.
"Speak to Caroline! Why, I wouldn't for the _world_! She'd fly through
the roof. She'd snap my head off! Speak to Caroline! You must be mad!"
One afternoon the doctor went to await his visitors on the platform of
the railway station. He was thoughtfully smiling. For some quaint
reason he was convinced that he was to be treated to a quick
manifestation of little Cora's peculiar and interesting powers. And
yet, when the train paused at the station, there appeared to him only
a pretty little girl in a fur-lined hood, and with her nose reddening
from the sudden cold, and--attended respectfully by her parents. He
smiled again, reflecting that he had comically exaggerated the dangers
of dear little Cora. It amused his philosophy to note that he had
really been perturbed.
As the big sleigh sped homeward there was a sudden shrill outcry from
the angel child: "Oh, mamma! mamma! They've forgotten my stove!"
"Hush, dear; hush!" said the mother. "It's all right."
"Oh, but, mamma, they've forgotten my stove!"
The doctor thrust his chin suddenly out of his top-coat collar.
"Stove?" he said. "Stove? What stove?"
"Oh, just a toy of the child's," explained the mother. "She's grown so
fond of it, she loves it so, that if we didn't take it everywhere with
her she'd suffer dreadfully. So we always bring it."
"Oh!" said the doctor. He pictured a little tin trinket. But when the
stove was really unmasked, it turned out to be an affair of cast iron,
as big as a portmanteau, and, as the stage people say, practicable.
There was some trouble that evening when came the hour of children's
bedtime. Little Cora burst into a wild declaration that she could not
retire for the night unless the stove was carried up-stairs and
placed, at her bedside. While the mother was trying to dissuade the
child, the Trescott's held their peace and gazed with awe. The
incident closed when the lamb-eyed father gathered the stove in his
arms and preceded the angel child to her chamber.
[Illustration: "THE LAMB-EYED FATHER PRECEDED THE ANGEL CHILD TO HER
CHAMBER"]
In the morning, Trescott was standing with his back to the dining room
fire, awaiting breakfast, when he heard a noise of descending guests.
Presently the door opened, and the party entered in regular order.
First came the angel child, then the cooing mother, and last the great
painter with his arm full of the stove. He deposited it gently in a
corner, and sighed. Trescott wore a wide grin.
"What are you carting that thing all over the house for?" he said,
brutally. "Why don't you put it some place where she can play with it,
and leave it there?"
The mother rebuked him with a look. "Well, if it gives her pleasure,
Ned?" she expostulated, softly. "If it makes the child happy to have
the stove with her, why shouldn't she have it?"
"Just so," said the doctor, with calmness.
Jimmie's idea was the roaring fireplace in the cabin of the lone
mountaineer. At first he was not able to admire a girl's stove built
on well-known domestic lines. He eyed it and thought it was very
pretty, but it did not move him immediately. But a certain respect
grew to an interest, and he became the angel child's accomplice. And
even if he had not had an interest grow upon him, he was certain to
have been implicated sooner or later, because of the imperious way of
little Cora, who made a serf of him in a few swift sentences. Together
they carried the stove out into the desolate garden and squatted it in
the snow. Jimmie's snug little muscles had been pitted against the
sheer nervous vigor of this little golden-haired girl, and he had not
won great honors. When the mind blazed inside the small body, the
angel child was pure force. She began to speak: "Now, Jim, get some
paper. Get some wood-little sticks at first. Now we want a match. You
got a match? Well, go get a match. Get some more wood. Hurry up, now!
No. _No!_ I'll light it my own self. You get some more wood. There!
Isn't that splendid? You get a whole lot of wood an' pile it up here
by the stove. An' now what'll we cook? We must have somethin' to cook,
you know, else it ain't like the real."
"Potatoes," said Jimmie, at once.
The day was clear, cold, bright. An icy wind sped from over the waters
of the lake. A grown person would hardly have been abroad save on
compulsion of a kind, and yet, when they were called to luncheon, the
two little simpletons protested with great cries.