THE thoughts of a little girl are not the thoughts of a little boy. Some
will say that a little girl’s thoughts are the gentler; and this may be,
for the boy roves more with his tribe and follows its hardier leaders;
but during the eighth or ninth year, and sometimes a little earlier,
there usually becomes evident the beginning of a more profound
difference. The little girl has a greater self-consciousness than the
boy has, but conceals hers better than he does his; moreover, she has
begun to discover the art of getting her way indirectly, which mystifies
him and outrages his sense of justice. Above all, she is given
precedence and preference over him, and yet he is expected to suppress
what is almost his strongest natural feeling, and be polite to her! The
result is that long feud between the sexes during the period running
from the ages of seven and eight to fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, when
reconciliation and reconstruction set in—often rapidly.
Of course the period varies with individuals;—however, to deal in
averages, a male of five will play with females of similar age almost as
contentedly as with other males, but when he has reached eight, though
he may still at times “play with girls,” he feels a guilt, or at least a
weakness, in doing so; for within him the long hatred has begun to
smoulder.
Many a parent and many an aunt will maintain that the girls are passive,
that it is the boys who keep the quarrel alive, though this is merely to
deny the relation between cause and result, and the truth is that the
boys are only the noisier and franker in the exchange of reciprocal
provocations. And since adults are but experienced children, we find
illumination upon such a point in examples of the feud’s revival in
middle age; for it is indeed sometimes revived, even under conditions of
matrimony. A great deal of coldness was shown to the suburban butcher
who pushed his wife into his sausage vat. “Stay!” the philosopher
protested. “We do not know what she had said to him.”
The feud is often desultory and intermittent; and of course it does not
exist between every boy and every girl; a _Montagu_ may hate the
_Capulets_ with all his vitals, yet feel an extraordinary kindness
toward one exceptional _Capulet_. Thus, Master Laurence Coy, nine,
permitted none to surpass him in hating girls. He proclaimed his
bitterness, and made the proclamation in public. (At a party in his own
house and given in his own honour, with girls for half his guests, he
went so far as to state—not in a corner, whispering, but in the centre
of the largest room and shouting—that he hated every last thing about
’em. It seemed that he wished to avoid ambiguity.) And yet, toward one
exceptional little girl he was as water.
Was what he felt for Elsie Threamer love? Naturally, the answer must
depend upon a definition of the word; and there are definitions varying
from the frivolous _mots_ tossed off by clergymen to the fanatical
dogmas of coquettes. Mothers, in particular, have their own definitions,
which are so often different from those of their sons that no one will
ever be able to compute the number of mothers who have informed sons,
ranging in age from fourteen to sixty-two, that what those sons mistook
for love, and insisted was love, was not love. Yet the conclusion seems
to be inevitable that behind all the definitions there is but one actual
thing itself; that it may be either a force, or a condition produced by
a force, or both; and that although the phenomena by which its presence
may be recognized are of the widest diversity, they may be somewhat
roughly classified according to the ages of the persons affected.
Finally, a little honest research will convince anybody that these ages
range from seven months to one hundred and thirty-four years; and if
scriptural records are accepted, the latter figure must be much
expanded.
Hence there appears to be warranted accuracy in the statement that
Laurence Coy was in a state of love. When he proclaimed his hatred of
all girls and every last thing about ’em, that very proclamation was
produced by his condition—it was a phenomenon related to the phenomena
of crime, to those uncalled-for proclamations of innocence that are
really the indications of guilt. He was indeed inimical to all other
girls; but even as he declared his animosity, he hoped Elsie was
noticing him.
Whenever he looked at her, he swallowed and had a warm but sinking
sensation in his lower chest. If he continued to be in her presence for
some time—that is, for more than four or five minutes—these symptoms
were abated but did not wholly disappear; the neck was still a little
uneasy, moving in a peculiar manner at intervals, as if to release
itself from contact with the collar, and there was a feeling of
looseness about the stomach.
In absence, her image was not ever and always within his doting fancy
shrined; far from it! When he did think of her, the image was fair,
doubtless; yet he had in mind nothing in particular he wished to say to
its original. And when he heard that she had the scarlet fever, he did
not worry. No, he only wondered if she could see him from a window as he
went by her house, and took occasion to pass that way with a new kite.
Truth to say, here was the gist of his love in absence; it consisted
almost entirely of a wish to have her for an audience while he
performed; and that’s not so far from the gist of divers older loves.
In her presence it was another matter; self-consciousness expanded to
the point of explosion, for here was actually the audience of his
fragmentary day-dreams, and great performances were demanded. Just at
this point, however, there was a difficulty;—having developed neither a
special talent nor even a design of any kind, he was forced back upon
the more rudimentary forms of self-expression. Thus it comes about that
sweet love itself will often be found the hidden cause of tumults that
break up children’s parties.
The moment of Elsie’s arrival at Laurence’s party could have been
determined by an understanding person even if Elsie had been invisible
to that person. Until then Laurence was decorous, greeting his arriving
guests with a little arrogance natural to the occasion, since this was
his own party and on his own premises; but the instant his glance fell
upon the well-known brazen glow of apparently polished curls, as Elsie
came toward him from the hall where she had left her pretty hat and
little white coat, his decorum vanished conspicuously.
The familiar symptoms had assailed him, and automatically he reacted to
prevent their unmanning him. Girls, generically, had been mentioned by
no one, and he introduced the topic without prelude, stating at the top
of his voice that he hated every last thing about ’em. Then, not waiting
for Elsie to greet him, not even appearing to be aware of her approach,
or of her existence, he ran across the room, shouting, “Hay, there,
Mister!” and hurled himself against a boy whose back was toward him.
Rebounding, he dashed upon another, bumping into him violently, with the
same cry of “Hay, there, Mister!” and went careening on, from boy to
boy, repeating the bellow with the bumping as he went.
Such easy behaviour on the part of the host immediately dispersed that
formal reticence which characterizes the early moments of most
children’s parties; the other boys fell in with Laurence’s idea and
began to plunge about the room, bumping one another with a glad
disregard of little girls who unfortunately got in their way. “Hay,
there, Mister!” was the favoured cry, shouted as loudly as possible; and
the bumping was as vigorous as the slogan. Falls were many and
uproarious; annoyed little girls were upset; furniture also fell; the
noise became glorious; and thus Laurence Coy’s party was a riot almost
from the start.
* * * * *
Now when boys at a party get this mob mood going, the state of mind of
the little girls is warrantably that of grown ladies among drunken men.
There is this difference, of course: that the adult ladies leave the
place and go home as soon as they can extricate themselves, whereas the
little girls are incapable of even imagining such a course of action;
they cannot imagine leaving a party before the serving of
“refreshments,” at the earliest. For that matter, children of both sexes
sometimes have a miserable time at a party yet remain to the bitter end
for no reason except that their minds are not equal to the conception of
a departure. A child who of his own impulse leaves a party before it is
over may be set down as either morbid or singularly precocious—he may
be a genius.
When the bumping and bellowing broke out at Laurence’s party, most of
the little girls huddled discontentedly close to the walls or in
corners, where they were joined by those who had been overturned; and
these last were especially indignant as they smoothed down their rumpled
attire. It cannot be said, however, that the little girls reduced the
general clamour; on the contrary, they increased it by the loudest
criticism.
Every one of the rumpled naturally singled out the bellowing bumper who
had overturned herself, and declared him to be the worst of the
malefactors bent upon “spoiling the party.” But as the rioting
continued, the ladies’ criticism shifted in a remarkable way, and
presently all of it became hotly concentrated upon one particular
rioter. The strange thing about this was that the individual thus made
the centre of odium was not Laurence, the founder of the objectionable
game and the ringleader of the ruffians; not fat Bobby Eliot, the
heaviest and most careless of his followers; not Thomas Kimball, the
noisiest; not any of the boys, indeed, but on the peculiar contrary, a
person of the resentful critics’ own sex.
One little girl alone, among those overturned, had neither fled to the
wall nor sought the protection of a corner; she remained upon the floor
where Laurence, too blindly bumping, had left her; and it must be
related that, thus recumbent, she kicked repeatedly at all who happened
to pass her way. “Hay there, Mister!” she said. “_I’ll_ show you!”
Her posture had no dignity; her action lacked womanliness; she seemed
unconventional and but little aware of those qualities which a young
female appearing in society should at least affect to possess. Hence it
is no wonder that even before she decided to stop kicking and rise from
the floor, she was already being censured. And what indeed was the
severity of that censure, when after rising, she bounced herself
violently against Laurence, ricocheted upon Thomas Kimball, and
shrilling, “Hay, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!” proceeded to enter
into the game with an enthusiasm surpassing that of any other
participant!
It cannot be said that she was welcomed by the male players; they made
it as clear as possible that they considered her enthusiasm gratuitous.
“Here, you!” the fat Eliot boy objected sternly, as she caromed into
him. “You ole Daisy Mears, you! You ought to know you might ruin a
person’s stummick, doing like that with your elbow.”
But Miss Mears was not affected by his severity; she projected herself
at him again. “Hay, there, Mister!” she whooped. “_I’ll_ show you!” And
so bounced on to the next boy.
Her voice, shrill beyond compare, could be heard—and by a sensitive ear
heard painfully—far above the bellowing and the criticism. Her
“Hay-there-Mister-_I’ll_-show-you!” was both impetuous and continuous;
and she covered more ground than any of the boys. Floored again, not
once but many times, she recovered herself by a method of her own; the
feet were quickly elevated as high as possible, then brought down, while
a simultaneous swing of the shoulders threw the body forward; and never
for an instant did she lose her up-and-at-’em spirit. She devised a new
manner of bumping—charging upon a boy, she would turn just at the
instant of contact, and back into him with the full momentum acquired in
the charge. Usually they both fell, but she had the advantage of being
the upper, which not only softened the fall for her but enabled her to
rise with greater ease because of her opponent’s efforts to hoist her
from him.
Now, here was a strange thing: the addition of this blithe companion
seemed to dull the sport for those who most keenly loved it. In
proportion as her eagerness for it increased, their own appeared to
diminish. Dozens of times, probably, she was advised to “cut it out,”
and with even greater frankness requested to “get on out o’ here!”
Inquiries were directed to her, implying doubts of her sanity and even
of her consciousness of her own acts. “Hay, listen!” several said to
her. “Do you think you know what you’re doin’?”
Finally she was informed, once more by implication, that she was
underweight—though here was a paradox, for her weight was visibly
enough to have overthrown the informer, who was Laurence. But this was
the second time she had done it, and his warmth of feeling was natural.
“Get off o’ me,” he said, and added the paradoxical appraisement of her
figure. His words were definite, but to the point only as reprisal for
her assault; Daisy Mears was properly a person, not a “thing”; neither
was she “old,” being a month or so younger than Laurence; nor did his
loose use of another adjective do credit to his descriptive accuracy. It
was true that Daisy’s party manners had lacked suavity, true that her
extreme vivacity had been uncalled-for, true that she was not beautiful;
but she was no thinner than she was stout, and she must have wished to
insist upon a recognition of this fact.
She was in the act of rising from a sitting posture upon Laurence when
he used the inaccurate word; and he had struggled to his hands and
knees, elevating her; but at once she sat again, with violence,
flattening him. “_Who’s_ skinny?” she inquired.
“You get up off o’ me!” he said fiercely.
She rose, laughing with all her shrillness, and Laurence would have
risen too, but Miss Mears, shouting, “Hay, there, Mister!” easily pushed
him down, for the polished floor was slippery and gave no footing.
Laurence tried again, and again the merry damsel aided him to prostrate
himself. This mortifying process was repeated and repeated until it
attracted the attention of most of the guests, while bumping stopped and
the bumpers gathered to look on; even to take an uproarious part in the
contest. Some of them pushed Daisy; some of them pushed Laurence; and
the latter, furious and scarlet, with his struggling back arched, and
his head lowering among his guests’ shoes and slippers, uttered many
remonstrances in a strangled voice.
Finally, owing to the resentful activity of the fat Eliot boy, who
remembered his stummick and pushed Daisy with ungallant vigour, the
dishevelled Laurence once more resumed the upright position of a man,
but only to find himself closely surrounded by rosily flushed faces, all
unpleasantly mirthful at his expense. The universe seemed to be made of
protuberant, taunting eyes and noisy open mouths.
“Ya-a-a-ay, Laur-runce!” they vociferated.
A lock of his own hair affected the sight of one of his eyes; a single
hair of his late opponent was in his mouth, where he considered a hair
of anybody’s out of place, and this one peculiarly so, considering its
source. Miss Mears herself, still piercing every tympanum with her
shrillness, rolled upon the floor but did not protract her hilarity
there. Instead she availed herself of him, and with unabated disrespect,
came up him hand-over-hand as if he had been a rope.
Then, as he strove to evade her too-familiar grasp, there fell a sorry
blow. Beyond the nearer spectators his unhampered eye caught the brazen
zigzag gleam of orderly curls moving to the toss of a dainty head; and
he heard the voice of Elsie, incurably sweet in tone, but oh, how
destroying in the words! Elsie must have heard some grown person say
them, and stored them for effective use.
“Pooh! Fighting with that rowdy child!”
“Fightin’?” shouted Miss Mears. “_That_ wasn’t fightin’!”
“It wasn’t?” Thomas Kimball inquired waggishly. “What was it?” And he
added with precocious satire: “I s’pose you call it makin’ love!”
To Laurence’s horror, Master Kimball’s waggish idea spread like a
virulent contagion, even to Laurence’s most intimate friends. “Ya-a-ay,
Laur-runce!” they shouted. “Daisy Mears is your _girl_! Daisy Mears is
Laurunce’s _girl_! Oh, Laur-_runce_!”
He could only rage and bellow. “She is _not_! You hush up! I hate her! I
hate her worse’n I do _any_body!”
But his protests were disallowed and shouted down; the tormentors
pranced, pointing at him with hateful forefingers, making other dreadful
signs, sickening him unutterably. “Day-zy Mears and Laur-runce Coy!
Daisy Mears is Laurunce’s _girl_!”
“She is _not_!” he bawled. “You hush _opp_! I hate her! I hate her
worse’n I do—worse’n I do—I hate her worse’n I do garbidge!”
It may have been that this comparison, so frankly unbowdlerized, helped
to inspire Miss Daisy Mears. More probably what moved her was merely a
continuation of the impulse propelling her from the moment of her first
fall to the floor upon being accidentally bumped by Laurence.
Surprisingly enough, in view of her present elations, Daisy had always
been thought a quiet and unobtrusive little girl; indeed, she had always
believed herself to be that sort of little girl. Never, until this
afternoon, had she attracted special notice at a party, or anywhere
else. Her nose, in particular, was almost unfortunately inconspicuous,
her hair curled so temporarily, even upon artificial compulsion, that
two small pigtails were found to be its best expression. She was the
most commonplace of little girls; yet it has never been proved that
commonplace people are content with their condition. Finding herself
upon the floor and kicking, this afternoon, Daisy Mears discovered, for
the first time in her life, that she occupied a prominent position and
was being talked about. Then and there rose high the impulse to increase
her prominence. What though comment were adverse, she was for once and
at last the centre of it! And for some natures, to taste distinction is
to determine upon the whole drunken cup: Daisy Mears had entered upon an
orgy.
Laurence’s choice of a phrase to illustrate the disfavour in which he
held her had a striking effect upon all his guests: the little girls
were shocked, said “Oh!” and allowed their mouths to remain open
indefinitely; the boys were seemingly maddened by their host’s free
expression—they howled, leaped, beat one another; but the most novel
course of action was that adopted by the newly ambitious Daisy. She ran
upon Laurence from behind, and threw her arms about him in a manner
permitting some question whether her intention might be an embrace or a
wrestling match. Her indiscreet words, however, dismissed the doubt.
“He’s my dear little pet!” she shouted.
For a moment Laurence was incredulous; then in a dazed way he began to
realize his dreadful position. He knew himself to be worse than
compromised: a ruinous claim to him seemed upon the point of being
established; and all the spectators instantly joined in the effort to
establish it. They circled about him, leaping and pointing. They bawled
incessantly within the very cup of his ear.
“She _is_! She is _too_ your girl! She says so _herself_!”
To Laurence the situation was simply what it would have been to Romeo
had an unattractive hoyden publicly claimed him for her own, embracing
him in Juliet’s presence, with the entire population of Verona
boisterously insisting upon the hoyden’s right to him. Moreover, Romeo’s
experience would have given him an advantage over Laurence. Romeo would
have known how to point out that it takes two to make a bargain, would
have requested the claimant to set forth witnesses or documents; he
could have turned the public in his favour, could have extricated
himself, and might have done so even with some grace. The Veronese would
have respected his argument.
Not so with Laurence’s public—for indeed his whole public now
surrounded him. This was a public upon whom evidence and argument were
wasted; besides, he had neither. He had only a dim kind of reasoning,
very hurried—a perception that his only way out was to make his conduct
toward Daisy Mears so consistently injurious that neither she nor the
public could pretend to believe that anything so monstrous as affection
existed between them. And since his conception of the first thing to be
done was frankly elemental, it was well for his reputation as a
gentleman and a host that his mother and his Aunt Ella happened to come
into the living-room just then, bringing some boxes of games and
favours. The mob broke up, and hurried in that direction.
Mrs. Coy looked benevolently over their heads, and completely mistaking
a gesture of her son, called to him smilingly: “Come, Laurence; you can
play tag with little Daisy after a while. Just now we’ve got some other
games for you.” Then, as he morosely approached, attended by Daisy, Mrs.
Coy offered them a brightly coloured cardboard box. “Here’s a nice
game,” she said, and continued unfortunately: “Since you want to play
with Daisy, you can amuse yourselves with that. It’s a game for just
two.”
“I won’t!” Laurence returned, and added distinctly: “I rather die!”
“But I thought you wanted to play with little Daisy,” Mrs. Coy explained
in her surprise. “I thought——”
“I rather die!” said Laurence, speaking so that everybody might hear
him. “I rather die a hunderd times!” And that no one at all might
mistake his meaning, he concluded: “I’d rather eat a million boxes of
rat-poison than play with her!”
So firm and loud a declaration of preference, especially in the
unpreferred person’s presence, caused a slight embarrassment to Mrs.
Coy. “But Laurence, dear,” she began, “you mustn’t——”
“I would!” he insisted. “I rather eat a million, _million_ boxes of
rat-poison than play with her! She——”
“_She’s your girl!_”
The sly interruption stopped him. It came from a person to be identified
only as one of a group clustering about his Aunt Ella’s boxes; and it
was accompanied by a general giggle but half-suppressed in spite of the
adult presences.
“You hush _opp_!” Laurence shouted.
“Laurence! Laurence!” said Mrs. Coy. “What _is_ the matter, dear? It
seems to me you’re really not at all polite to poor little Daisy.”
Laurence pursued the line of conduct he had set for himself as his only
means of safety. “I wouldn’t be polite to her,” he said; “I wouldn’t be
polite to her if I had to eat a million——”
“Laurence!”
“I wouldn’t!” he stoutly maintained. “Not if I had to eat a million,
_million_——”
“Never mind!” his mother said with some emphasis. “Plenty of the other
boys will be delighted to play with dear little Daisy.”
“No,” said Daisy brightly, “I _got_ to play with Laurence.”
Laurence looked at her. When a grown person looks at another in that
way, it is time for the police, and Mrs. Coy was conscious of an
emergency. She took Laurence by the shoulders, faced him about and told
him to run and play with some one else; then she turned back to Daisy.
“We’ll find some _nice_ little boy——” she began. But Daisy had
followed Laurence.
She gave him a lively tap on the shoulder. “Got your tag!” she cried,
and darted away, but as he did not follow, she returned to him. “Well,
what _are_ we goin’ to play?” she inquired.
Laurence gave her another look. “You hang around me a little longer,” he
said, “an’ I’ll—I’ll—I’ll——”
Again came the giggled whisper:
“_She’s your girl!_”
Laurence ran amuck. Head down, he charged into the group whence came the
whisper, and successfully dispersed it. The component parts fled,
squawking; Laurence pursued; boys tripped one another, wrestled,
skirmished in groups; and, such moods being instantly contagious among
males under twelve, many joined in the assault with a liveliness not
remote, at least in appearance, from lunacy.
“Laurence! Laurence!” his mother exclaimed in vain, for he was the chief
disturber; but he was too actively occupied in that capacity to be aware
of her. She and Aunt Ella could only lament and begin to teach the
little girls and two or three of the older and nobler boys to “play
games,” while troups of gangsters swept out of the room, then through it
and out again, through other rooms, through halls and then were heard
whooping and thumping on the front stairway.
One little girl was not with the rather insulted players of the
cardboard games in the living-room. She accompanied the gangsters,
rioting with the best, her little muslin skirt fluttering with the speed
of her going; while ever was heard, with slight intermission, her
piercing battle-cry: “_Hay_, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!” But the
male chorus had a new libretto to work from, evidently: all through the
house, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber, their merciless
gaieties resounded:
“Ya-a-ay, Laur-runce! Wait for your _girl_! Your _girl_ wants you,
Laurunce!”
“What a curious child that Daisy Mears is!” Aunt Ella said to Laurence’s
mother. “I’d always thought she was such a quiet little girl.”
“‘_Quiet!_’” Mrs. Coy exclaimed. And then as a series of shocks overhead
noticeably jarred the ceiling, she started. “Good heavens! They’re
upstairs—they’ll have the roof on us!”
She hurried into the hall, but the outlaws were already descending. Just
ahead of them plunged Laurence, fleeing like some rabid thing. Behind
him, in the ruck of boys, Daisy Mears seemed to reach for him at the
full length of her extended arms; and so the rout went on and out
through the open front doors to the yard, where still was heard above
all other cries, “_Hay_, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!”
Mrs. Coy returned helplessly to the guests of sweeter behaviour, and did
what she could to amuse them, but presently she was drawn to a window by
language without.
It was the voice of her son in frenzy. He stood on the lawn, swinging a
rake about him circularly. “Let her try it!” he said. “Let her try it
just once more, an’ _I’ll_ show her!”
For audience, out of reach of the rake, he had Daisy Mears and all his
male guests save the two or three spiritless well-mannered at feeble
play in the living-room; and this entire audience, including Miss Mears,
replied in chanting chorus: “Daisy Mears an’ Laurunce Coy! She’s your
_girl_!” Such people are hard to convince.
Laurence swung the rake, repeating:
“Just let her try it; that’s all I ast! Just let her try to come near me
again!”
“_Laurence!_” said his mother from the window.
He looked up, and there was the sincerest bitterness in his tone as he
said: “Well, I stood _enough_ around here this afternoon!”
“Put down the rake,” she said. “The idea of shaking a rake at a little
girl!”
The idea she mentioned seemed reasonable to Laurence, in his present
state of mind, and in view of what he had endured. “I bet _you’d_ shake
it at her,” he said, “if she’d been doin’ to you what she’s been doin’
to me!”
Now, from Mrs. Coy’s standpoint, that was nothing short of grotesque;
yet actually there was something in what he said. Mrs. Coy was in love
with Mr. Coy; and if another man—one whom she disliked and thought
homely and unattractive—had bumped into her at a party, upsetting her
frequently, sitting on her, pushing her over repeatedly as she attempted
to rise, then embracing her and claiming her as his own, and following
her about, and pursuing her even when she fled, insisting upon his claim
to her and upon embracing her again and again, causing Mr. Coy to
criticize her with outspoken superiority—and if all this had taken
place with the taunting connivance of absolutely every one of the best
people she knew—why, under such parallel circumstances, Mrs. Coy might
or might not have armed herself with a rake, but this would have
depended, probably, on whether or not there was a rake handy, and
supposing there was, upon whether or not she became too hysterical to
use it.
Mrs. Coy had no realization whatever that any such parallel could be
drawn; she coldly suggested that the party was being spoiled and that
Laurence might well be ashamed of himself. “It’s really _very_ naughty
of you,” she said; and at a word from Aunt Ella, she added: “Now you’ve
all had enough of this rough romping and you must come in quietly and
behave yourselves like little gentlemen—and like a little lady! The
pianist from the dancing-school has come, and dear little Elsie Threamer
is going to do her fancy dance for us.”
With that, under her eye, the procession filed into the house—and took
seats in the living-room without any renewal of undesirable
demonstrations. Laurence had the brooding air of a person who has been
dangerously trifled with; but he seated himself in an orderly manner,
and unfortunately did not observe which of his guests just afterward
came to occupy the next chair. Elsie, exquisitely dainty, a lovely
sight, was standing alone in the open space in the centre of the room.
The piano rippled out a tinkling run of little bells, and the graceful
child began to undulate and pirouette. Her conscientious eyes she kept
all the while downcast, with never a glance to any spectator, least of
all to the lorn Laurence; but he had a miserable sense of what those
veiled eyes thought about him, and he felt low and contaminated by the
repulsive events connected with another of his guests. As he dumbly
looked at Elsie, while she danced so prettily, beautiful things seemed
to be floating about him in a summer sky: angels like pigeons with
lovely faces, large glass globes in rainbow colours, and round, pure
white icing cakes. His spiritual nature was uplifted; and almost his
sufferings had left him, when his spine chilled at a sound behind him—a
choked giggle and a hoarse but piercing whisper.
“Look at who Laurence is sittin’ by! _Oh_, oh!”
He turned and found Daisy in the chair next to his. Her small bright
eyes were fixed upon him in an intolerable mirth; her shoulders were
humped with the effect to control that same, and her right hand tensely
covered her mouth. From behind him came further gurgles and the words:
“Sittin’ by his _girl_!”
At this moment Elsie was just concluding her dance with a series of
charming curtseys. Laurence could not wait for them to be finished; he
jumped from his chair, and crossed before the lovely dancer to a seat on
the other side of the room, a titter following him. More than the titter
followed him, in fact. Daisy walked on tiptoe just behind him.
But when she reached the centre of the room, she was suddenly inspired
by the perception of a new way to increase her noticeableness. She
paused before the curtseying _danseuse_ and also sank in curtseys as
deep, though not so adept. Then she too began to dance, and the piano
having stopped, accompanied herself by singing loudly, “Ti-didy-um-tum,
dee-dee-dee!” She pirouetted, undulated, hopped on one leg with the
other stiff and rather high before her; she pranced in a posture of
outrageous convexity from one point of view, of incredible concavity
from the other. Then she curtsied again, in recognizable burlesque of
the original, and flounced into the chair next to Laurence’s, for he had
been so shortsighted as to leave a vacancy beside him. This time his
Aunt Ella had to take him out into the hall by force and talk to him.
A little later, when ice-cream, paper caps, and favours had been
distributed, the party was over; and among those who presented
themselves in the polite formalities of leavetaking was, naturally,
Daisy Mears. On account of continued surveillance on the part of his
Aunt Ella, Laurence was unable to respond in words, but his expression
said a thousand eloquent things for him.
Daisy curtsied demurely. “G’by. Thank you for a wunnaful time,
Laurence,” she said; and went out of the house with a character that had
changed permanently during the brief course of a children’s party.
As for Laurence, he had been through a dog’s time; and he showed it.
Every night, after he said his bedside prayers, there was an additional
rite his mother had arranged for him; he was to say: “I know that I have
a character, and I know that I am a soul.” But to-night he balked.
“Go on,” his mother bade him. “Say it, Laurence.”
“I doe’ want to,” he said dully.
Mrs. Coy sighed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you: you behave so
queerly sometimes! Don’t you know you ought to appreciate what your
mamma does for you—when she went to all the trouble to give you a nice
party just to make you happy? Oughtn’t you to do what she wants you to,
to pay her for all that happiness?”
“I guess so.” The poor child somehow believed it—but as he went through
his formula and muttered that he knew he had a character, it is probable
that he felt a strong doubt in the matter. This may have caused his
aversion to saying it.