It came to light two days later as the most treasured ornament of her doll"s-house. It seems that Hattie long ago saw a set of doll"s dishes in a toy shop window, and has ever since dreamed of possessing a set of her own. The communion cup was not quite the same, but it answered.
Now, if our family had only had a little less religion and a little more sense, they would have returned the cup, perfectly unharmed, and have marched Hattie to the nearest toy shop and bought her some dishes. But instead, they bundled the child and her belongings into the first train they could catch, and shoved her in at our front door, proclaiming loudly that she was a thief.
I am pleased to say that I gave that indignant deacon and his wife such a thorough scolding as I am sure they have never listened to from the pulpit. I borrowed some vigorous bits from Sandy"s vocabulary, and sent them home quite humbled. As for poor little Hattie, here she is back again, after going out with such high hopes. It has an awfully bad moral effect on a child to be returned to the asylum in disgrace, especially when she wasn"t aware of committing a crime. It gives her a feeling that the world is full of unknown pitfalls, and makes her afraid to take a step. I must bend all my energies now toward finding another set of parents for her, and ones that haven"t grown so old and settled and good that they have entirely forgotten their own childhood.
Sunday.
I forgot to tell you that our new farmer is here, Turnfelt by name; and his wife is a love, yellow hair and dimples. If she were an orphan, I could place her in a minute. We can"t let her go to waste. I have a beautiful plan of building an addition to the farmer"s cottage, and establishing under her comfortable care a sort of brooding-house where we can place our new little chicks, to make sure they haven"t anything contagious and to eliminate as much profanity as possible before turning them loose among our other perfect chicks.
How does that strike you? It is very necessary in an inst.i.tution as full of noise and movement and stir as this to have some isolated spot where we can put cases needing individual attention. Some of our children have inherited nerves, and a period of quiet contemplation is indicated.
Isn"t my vocabulary professional and scientific? Daily intercourse with Dr. Robin MacRae is extremely educational.
Since Turnfelt came, you should see our pigs. They are so clean and pink and unnatural that they don"t recognize one another any more as they pa.s.s.
Our potato field is also unrecognizable. It has been divided with string and pegs into as many squares as a checker-board, and every child has staked out a claim. Seed catalogues form our only reading matter.
Noah has just returned from a trip to the village for the Sunday papers to amuse his leisure. Noah is a very cultivated person; he not only reads perfectly, but he wears tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed spectacles while he does it. He also brought from the post office a letter from you, written Friday night. I am pained to note that you do not care for "Gosta Berling" and that Jervis doesn"t. The only comment I can make is, "What a shocking lack of literary taste in the Pendleton family!"
Dr. MacRae has another doctor visiting him, a very melancholy gentleman who is at the head of a private psychopathic inst.i.tution, and thinks there"s no good in life. But I suppose this pessimistic view is natural if you eat three meals a day with a tableful of melancholics. He goes up and down the world looking for signs of degeneracy, and finds them everywhere. I expected, after half an hour"s conversation, that he would ask to look down my throat to see if I had a cleft palate. Sandy"s taste in friends seems to resemble his taste in literature. Gracious! this is a letter!
Good-by.
SALLIE.
Thursday, May 2.
Dear Judy:
Such a bewildering whirl of events! The J. G. H. is breathless.
Incidentally, I am on the way toward solving my problem of what to do with the children while the carpenters and plumbers and masons are here.
Or, rather, my precious brother has solved it for me.
This afternoon I went over my linen supply, and made the shocking discovery that we have only sheets enough to change the children"s beds every two weeks, which, it appears, is our shiftless custom. While I was still in the midst of my household gear, with a bunch of keys at my girdle, looking like the chatelaine of a medieval chateau, who should be ushered in but Jimmie?
Being extremely occupied, I dropped a slanting kiss on his nose, and sent him off to look over the place in charge of my two oldest urchins.
They collected six friends and organized a baseball game. Jimmie came back blown, but enthusiastic, and consented to prolong his visit over the week end, though after the dinner I gave him he has decided to take his future meals at the hotel. As we sat with our coffee before the fire, I confided to him my anxiety as to what should be done with the chicks while their new brooder is building. You know Jimmie. In one half a minute his plan was formulated.
"Build an Adirondack camp on that little plateau up by the wood lot.
You can make three open shacks, each holding eight bunks, and move the twenty-four oldest boys out there for the summer. It won"t cost two cents."
"Yes," I objected, "but it will cost more than two cents to engage a man to look after them."
"Perfectly easy," said Jimmie, grandly. "I"ll find you a college fellow who"ll be glad to come during the vacation for his board and a mere pittance, only you"ll have to set up more filling board than you gave me tonight."
Dr. MacRae dropped in about nine o"clock, after visiting the hospital ward. We"ve got three cases of whooping cough, but all isolated, and no more coming. How those three got in is a mystery. It seems there is a little bird that brings whooping cough to orphan asylums.
Jimmie fell upon him for backing in his camp scheme, and the doctor gave it enthusiastically. They seized pencil and paper and drew up plans. And before the evening was over, the last nail was hammered. Nothing would satisfy those two men but to go to the telephone at ten o"clock and rouse a poor carpenter from his sleep. He and some lumber are ordered for eight in the morning.
I finally got rid of them at ten-thirty, still talking uprights and joists and drainage and roof slants.
The excitement of Jimmie and coffee and all these building operations induced me to sit down immediately and write a letter to you; but I think, by your leave, I"ll postpone further details to another time.
Yours ever,
SALLIE.
Sat.u.r.day.
Dear Enemy:
Will you be after dining with us at seven tonight? It"s a real dinner party; we"re going to have ice-cream.
My brother has discovered a promising young man to take charge of the boys,--maybe you know him,--Mr. Witherspoon, at the bank. I wish to introduce him to asylum circles by easy steps, so PLEASE don"t mention insanity or epilepsy or alcoholism or any of your other favorite topics.
He is a gay young society leader, used to very fancy things to eat. Do you suppose we can ever make him happy at the John Grier Home? Yours in evident haste,
SALLIE McBRIDE.
Sunday.
Dear Judy:
Jimmie was back at eight Friday morning, and the doctor at a quarter past. They and the carpenter and our new farmer and Noah and our two horses and our eight biggest boys have been working ever since. Never were building operations set going in faster time. I wish I had a dozen Jimmies on the place, though I will say that my brother works faster if you catch him before the first edge of his enthusiasm wears away. He would not be much good at chiseling out a medieval cathedral.
He came back Sat.u.r.day morning aglow with a new idea. He had met at the hotel the night before a friend who belongs to his hunting club in Canada, and who is cashier of our First (and only) National Bank.
"He"s a bully good sport," said Jimmie, "and exactly the man you want to camp out with those kids and lick "em into shape. He"ll be willing to come for his board and forty dollars a month, because he"s engaged to a girl in Detroit and wants to save. I told him the food was rotten, but if he kicked enough, you"d probably get a new cook."
"What"s his name?" said I, with guarded interest.
"He"s got a peach of a name. It"s Percy de Forest Witherspoon."
I nearly had hysterics. Imagine a Percy de Forest Witherspoon in charge of those twenty-four wild little savages!
But you know Jimmie when he has an idea. He had already invited Mr.
Witherspoon to dine with me on Sat.u.r.day evening, and had ordered oysters and squabs and ice-cream from the village caterer to help out my veal.
It ended by my giving a very formal dinner party, with Miss Matthews and Betsy and the doctor included.
I almost asked the Hon. Cy and Miss Snaith. Ever since I have known those two, I have felt that there ought to be a romance between them.
Never have I known two people who matched so perfectly. He"s a widower with five children. Don"t you suppose it might be arranged? If he had a wife to take up his attention, it might deflect him a little from us.
I"d be getting rid of them both at one stroke. It"s to be considered among our future improvements.
Anyway, we had our dinner. And during the course of the evening my anxiety grew, not as to whether Percy would do for us, but as to whether we should do for Percy. If I searched the world over, I never could find a young man more calculated to win the affection of those boys.
You know, just by looking at him, that he does everything well, at least everything vigorous. His literary and artistic accomplishments I suspect a bit, but he rides and shoots and plays golf and football and sails a boat. He likes to sleep out of doors and he likes boys. He has always wanted to know some orphans; often read about "em in books, he says, but never met any face to face. Percy does seem too good to be true.
Before they left, Jimmie and the doctor hunted up a lantern, and in their evening clothes conducted Mr. Witherspoon across a plowed field to inspect his future dwelling.